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Home and Pet Sitting You Can Trust! Members of Trusted House Sitters.

04/14/2021

We were lucky enough to have Jim be able to travel safely to Hood River Oregon to house sit with Howie the cat for the second time. This time was different; Jim went alone, no restaurants, no breweries. River walks and bike rides were on the agenda and it was a nice break from the home renovations that have consumed us since September. See you next year Howie!

06/02/2020

House Sitting in the Age of Coronavirus

We've held out writing this post to allow for more time to pass giving us better insight as to how this pandemic has affected us and the house sitting community as a whole. Now that the world is slowly opening it's eyes, we think it's a good time to reflect on the impact and give some insight to anyone who may be considering house sitting.

For the past year two years, Jim and I have been away from our home in Panama. We found someone to rent the house while we were gone and our intention was to go on some bike tours, help with some family stuff and house sit while being able to visit friends and family. We were able to accomplish all of that until...da da dun!

When the virus hit the US, we were in Hood River Oregon, close to Jim's family. We had a great time for 6 weeks sitting with Howie the cat, in a beautiful home and enjoying all Hood River has to offer. After Hood River, we had a 3 week sit in Seattle. By his time, things were getting kinda crazy, but restaurants were still open and we enjoyed our stay. Our next sits were in Tennessee, Illinois, Panama, Wisconsin, Florida and Colorado. By the time we left Seattle and stopped at our storage in Wisconsin to swap our wardrobes, states were starting to shut down. Eager to get to Tennessee we left Wisconsin with warm weather clothes feeling grateful that we had a nice long term house sit near Chattanooga. But one by one, all of our house sits cancelled. In Panama, the airport was shut down, leaving our tenant stranded in Panama and us stranded in the US. It all happened so quickly! This left us essentially homeless. By this time we were in Tennessee with a minivan full of camping gear, so we thought we'd ride out the storm at one of the many beautiful parks. Nope! All parks shut down within 3 days of our arrival. Our only option was a KOA in the middle of nowhere. We ended up finding a small Airbnb with a mini fridge and microwave. We spent our time eating frozen lasagna and instant oatmeal, along with the occasional curbside pick up of bad Mexican and to go margaritas, woot!

It's pretty inconvenient to be a house sitter during a pandemic, but it's not likely to change our lives in a major way once it's over. I suppose that the novel coronavirus pandemic is like a 100 year flood. We could scrap the whole idea of being nomads and wait for the next pandemic to arrive in 5, 10, 50 or 100 years, or we can move ahead with our plan to see as many of the porches the world has to offer while we can. That being said, we are among the lucky ones. We have the resources to be able to pay for an Airbnb. We also have family who, while they may not like it, would let us stay with them. Many house sitters don't have either option. And we've heard some pretty sad stories of people being stranded, homeless in foreign countries or living out of their cars.

The best advice I could give to others is to be sure that you have the resources tucked away somewhere, so that you can either buy a last minute plane ticket home or get a short term rental. This virus isn't the only risk out there; earthquakes, floods, fires, tsunamis and more can all wipe out a carefully planned house sitting schedule. But, while there is some risk in putting all your eggs in the house sitting basket, this (hopefully) rare event, won't deter us. We are travelers at heart and don't see that changing any time soon. So stay well and travel far, but have your contingency plan in place and keep your sense of humor.

02/28/2020

Well, what can we say. We've just wrapped up 6 weeks in Hood River Oregon with sweet Howie. We'll miss everything about this sit. A beautiful home, amazing riverside walks, scrumptious restaurants, plentiful breweries, sunny bike rides, interesting hikes and possibly the world's best cat-friend. THIS is why we signed up with Trusted Housesitters.

02/02/2020

The perks of house-sitting with Howie ❤️

01/28/2020

We got to spend a few days sitting with our new friend Ranger in Federal Way, Washington. He's a pretty chill dude who sleeps all day and prowls all night. He brought his buddy Roy over too. Roy is a beautiful neighborhood feral, who stops by twice a day for food. Cindy has set up several places for Roy to be able to stay warm and dry, so he has definitely made her home his kinda, sorta home. He's extremely cautious, so we couldn't get anywhere near him. In fact, I'm not convinced he's a Roy, he may be a Royelle. Who knows, but Roy is a beautiful kitty. And the bird watching was super! We really enjoyed this house sit and hope to be able to visit again some time!

01/20/2020

House-sitting with Cocoa was so relaxing. What a great old gal she is. We couldn't have been luckier than to get this last minute sit with this sweet doggo in a beautiful home just blocks from the beach. Thank you Chuck and Tracy!

12/25/2019

Another sit with Pico, the world's most affectionate ginger. Love this cat and his new holiday collar (he actually only agreed to wear it for pictures)
We hope your holidays are as filled with kitty snuggles as ours 🎄

12/07/2019

It's always sad to lose a friend 😿 She was a sweet ol' gal and we enjoyed caring for her for a few weeks. We love getting updates about our new found friends, but were so sad to hear about Petals.
RIP Petals

11/14/2019

Spending a month with 17 year old Petals was a dream. A sweet old kitty in a lovely home. Senior pets are the BEST! She followed us around and shamelessly curled up wherever we sat down. She's a love who just wants a blanket on a warm lap. See you again in June Petals!

10/29/2019

In honor of National Cat Day and Halloween, I give you this video of Jefe, our most ferocious feline foster.

10/28/2019

Remembering 7 weeks of doggie fun with these cool dudes!

Address

Hood River, OR
97031

Website

https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/house-and-pet-sitters/united-states/colorado/fort-collins/l/981824/

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Home and Pet Sitting

About

Hi and welcome to our profile! We’re Jim and Judi from Colorado, where we lived for 25 years and now have a home in Panama, Central America. We love to travel, especially by bicycle. We have toured with our bikes all over the US and in Europe. In between bicycle tours, we return to our home in Panama or house sit. When in Panama, we are active with our local rescue and have fostered many animals from the community. Since we don't have any pets of our own now, house sitting and working with the rescue gives us the opportunity to have animals, which we miss. We enjoy traveling, experiencing the different cultures and ways of life and meeting interesting people from all over the world.

Why we want to house sit

House sitting gives us the opportunity to travel to places we haven't visited before and it also allows us to be around pets, which is the one thing we miss from our "previous lives." We often travel to places where we have friends and house sit nearby which gives us a chance to visit and catch up on a more leisurely basis. Often our house sits are a nice break between our bicycle tours and offer us a chance to rest a bit and plan for the next one.