One of our Housesit Match homeowners very kindly sent us a blog describing how she believes our housesitting platform has been a good fit or ‘match’ for her and her husband and their pets. So as a way to share her housesit story, and perhaps encourage other home and pet owners to step forward and ask us to help them, we share the Housesit Match experience of Spain-based Kemkem her husband and their two dogs. Thanks again Kemkem for your lovely contribution to our history of HouseSitMatch, the housesitting platform…

As travelers we like to spend time in a location to learn more about each country

My husband and l travel a lot – a whole lot! It’s been that way ever since we pretty much sold everything we owned and left the United States over three years ago.

Our decision to retire early and do what we loved best –  to travel – was triggered by a tragedy. I watched one of my older sisters work hard to raise three boys. They were her life and she rarely took any time off for herself. That was going to be in the future. Unfortunately, life had other plans and she ended up losing her life to breast and lung cancer.  Her loss shook me to the core.

I realized that yes, life is indeed short. Since l was young, l had always felt the urge to travel, discover new places and meet new people. Somehow we ended up with the house, the job, the cars, all the trappings of “normal” adult life. We made the decision to get our affairs in order and get to traveling. It didn’t happen for almost three years, and involved lots of sacrifices, but it was worth it.

HousesitMatch helps us care for our dogs at home while we travel

Our little family includes two precious dogs, both rescues from Houston. I would be lying if l said we didn’t contemplate leaving them behind, but we ultimately couldn’t do it. They moved with us to Malta, which was our very first destination.

For the first eight months, we didn’t travel outside the country because we had no one we trusted to look after them. We eventually did find a really nice kennel that was popular with the other expats on the island. They were very good with the dogs.

Moving to Seville in Spain

I had resigned myself to the same fate once we moved to Seville, Spain. I really had no idea about people who housesit. Never heard of it as an online business until one day l saw an ad on the internet. I signed on to two platforms. I was a bit nervous with the first couple that sat for us, but they were really nice and it went well. The dogs liked them.

Housesit Options

Lamia is very intuitive. I am kind of an organized person, but admit to being be a scatterbrain when it comes to some things, like dates etc. I have been known to book us travel for overlapping days ;-). To start with I had no idea how to use the HouseSitMatch website to put an ad in etc… but she patiently helped and made sure to put the right dates etc. We have  found really good sitters through HouseSitMatch.

Repeat housesits

We’ve used them l believe four times in six months. We have another upcoming in October through the site as well. As homeowners and pet owners, it is such a relief to be able to find knowledgeable, trustworthy people to take care of our beloved pets when we go away. That to us is very important thing. We’ve had all kinds of people caring for our dogs including an Australian family, and American couple and a British retired sports teacher!