How it all started
It was in November 2015 when we became aware of house sitting out of financial difficulties. We started traveling through south east asia in early October and somehow ended up in Perth by mid of November. We lived with friends at a fair price, but quickly noticed that something had to happen financially.
While browsing gumtree we came across an advertisement from a housesitting agency. We applied for the job, got it immediately and from that point on the house sitting has accompanied us to this day. That was our lifestyle. we traveled and lived in the houses of strangers 80% of the time. We took care of your animals, watered your plants, emptied the mailbox and sometimes even made friends.
To this day, because nobody has been traveling since the corona virus and therefore no longer need a house sitter. What is left to us is the experience from over 40 housesits, 99% of them in Australia, countless photos, funny and not so funny stories.
I want to tell you some of these stories and show you photos of the animals.
Rusty our little Dingo
Let´s start with one of our favourite, Rusty. He is a Dingo mixed breed and you can tell that very quickly. It´s all about food. Rusty isn´t a dog who want´s to snuggle on the couch, but if you´re lucky enough you can to scratch his belly. If you can, do it the right way, otherwise he gets pretty pissed.
Don´t get tricked by that smile :)
Rusty is the stubbornest dog we've ever had, but we love him the most of all. Walking with him can be a real challenge, but if you know how to handle dogs you can get him under control. He is by no means aggressive and does not jump on other people. In fact, he has no interest in strangers. But when the going gets tough, he becomes the real protector.
He is one of some dogs we take care of regularly, so we know him quite well already.
Once I was walking with him in the forest when suddenly a rottweiler barking and bare teeth came running out of nowhere. I immediately realized that he is aggressive and will try to attack us. Although Rusty easily weighed 5 kilos less and was smaller, he immediately got on his back legs and defended me until the owner of the rottweiler was there to help. Luckily nothing happened, apart from a few small scratches. Of course he got a big bone for dinner, for beeing so brave.
Rusty eating a stick
The weird thing about Rusty is that he eats everything he can find. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Some of his favorites are dead animals (Possums, Rats, Frogs and so on), Duck Poo he loves Duck Poo, of course any kind of human food he finds on the street like fries, potato chips, chewing gums. He also eats wood, yes wood. If he gets bored while on the beach he starts to eat sticks. He is not only chewing on them, no he eats them completely. Good things is, he also likes, apples, carrots and any other vegetables you´ll give him.
Rusty is definitely one very weird dog, but that´s why we love him so much.
T-Rex aka nasty Farts
T-Rex, who has by far the coolest name is another dog we took care of twice already. He is a typical Staffordshire, loves cuddles, belly rubs, run around outside and gets his 5 minutes at least once a day. When he goes nuts, you can only laugh as the sounds he makes are absolutely not dog like. He sounds more like a T-Rex! ;)
T-Rex has to eat out of one of these slow feeder bowls. Otherwise his food would be gone in seconds. This brings us to the funny fact of T-Rex, which his owner warned us about before. The owner, a young women from Brisbane told us that his farts can be pretty nasty. We were just laughing and thought well, can´t be that bad. We were so wrong!! T-Rex farts smell so bad that you have to leave the room for a few seconds until the winds are gone. It´s such a weir smell and he does that quite often during a tv night on the couch.
Nevertheless, we were happy to take care of him because he is very easy to care for and listens to every command.
If you liked those stories, make sure to come back as I have plenty of them. Believe me, dogs can be so entertaining and they are such beautiful creatures. Actually they are the ones who benefit the most of this crisis as they finally get the attention at home they deserve.