We’ve recently moved again, this time to a spectacular area of the Adelaide Hills, not far from the city. We’re here for 4 weeks looking after a very “human-like” Cavoodle. My first puppy (for my 16th birthday) was a minature poodle. He was highly intelligent, but also very sensitive. And the little dog we’re looking after is like that too, except he has a lot more “little quirks”. Like today, for example, I was going to take him for a walk, but he had other ideas. He wanted to play ball and refused to come near me when I had the harness. He was really stubborn, funny little being!
In June-July, we stayed around the Mitcham area for 4 weeks, looking after a very sweet cat and 6 hens. The cat was pretty laid back and slept most of the time, except during her “crazy periods”, when she raced round and round the house. Chickens are not much work either – just collect their eggs, give them food and water and clean up after them. One day, I took them out a dish of cut up fruit and veg and a couple of them flew up and landed in the dish. Sorry, we didn’t get a video of that, it would’ve looked pretty funny.
We’ve had quite a few “longer sits” (4 weeks or more) this year, but we can’t always get the dates going straight from one to the next. So, after our Mitcham sit we had a week’s gap, where we had nowhere to go. Then, suddenly an advert appeared for sitters to care for a very cute little Maltese Shih Tzu dog. We were lucky enough to get the job, so that was great! The little dog was gorgeous!
The majority of house sitters prefer to do longer sits, because we don’t have to pack and unpack our things so often. We timed ourselves packing up our things and it takes us about 4 hours (between the two of us). I know it seems a long time, but it’s not just our clothes that we take inside – it’s also our laptops and associated gear, plus a large computer screen (unless we’re lucky enough to use one that the home owner says we can use. I used to have a portable desk too, but I’ve given that away now. John has been carrying a guitar around everywhere we go, then he has some art canvasses that he draws and paints on. Also, we have our own food supplies and linen and cleaning materials. So, there’s quite a bit to fit into the car. Lucky we didn’t keep even more of our stuff out of storage!
