Has anyone tried pet-sitting, where you stay in other homes? That is on our list to research. We purposefully waited until after the holidays to see if the demand remained high, before registering, most likely with Trusted HouseSitters.
We lost our last urchin after about 25+ years of pet ownership. It very much left a void, but we don’t want to start over, assuming a new family member could easily outlive us. We also have total freedom to travel for the first time.
We thought pet-sitting might be a win-win. We know what it involves. We miss having pets. As home-owners, we’re comfortable with home issues that might arise. We would have loved a similar service (but never had the nerve to have someone we did not know house and pet-sit). But, I’m guessing we only see the positives, and may be overlooking some of the negatives.
Losing our 14-year-old cat was very sad, but no more pets for us. Freedom from all responsibility is a very important facet of this stage of our lives.
We were on a trip recently and one couple raved about the experiences they had having people come and stay with their cat(s?) while they are gone. I don’t think they do the sitting themselves, and I haven’t met anyone who does.
We are down to one almost 5 year old cat, but are seriously considering another. It’s relatively inexpensive to pay someone to come every other day to feed her. When I had a diabetic cat, it was not so cheap.
DS has a wonderful dog. He brings him to our house for visits and we occasionally dog-sit for him and the gf. I guess it must be like having grandchildren…pleasure without a lot of responsibility!
We won’t consider a dog until we’ve decided to travel less.
Something to consider when getting a dog late in life is whether a senior community would allow pets. My MIL had a small dog and was allowed to keep her after being “tested” for compatibility to the community…and I believe there was a size restriction. But residents were explicitly told they were not allowed to get a new pet.
We got a golden doodle standard size. She is 60 lbs. Every time we take her to the vet he mentions that she is the healthiest weight dog he sees. We learned to groom her ourselves. Not perfect but she does not look in the mirror. We got her because when we got grandkids we were not sure if they would have allergies.
She loves the snow.
Only thing that we would do now is get her prophylactically the surgery for GDV gastro dilatation volvulus surgery at the time she was neutered. They did not routinely do it when we got her. It is apparently easy, much less expensive, and preventive in this large chested poodle type. We had to recently get emergency surgery for it this summer -she is back to normal now. Apparently German shepherd dogs in the military and police variety get it prophylactically done now.
As far as grandkids- we totally enjoy watching them and playing with them when we visit - usually a month at a time 4 times a year. I always plan a new activity. They are 3 and 5 now. I bought a toaster over and clay to make small animals and some jewelry.
I got a small ice cream maker for them to make ice cream. I feel like Mary Poppins when we visit in that I have a new idea each time.
I just got a foldable bicycle to bring with us to ride with them down the street.
I makeup games- pick a card and we will do it. Tie a shoe, write cursive your name, etc. D said that she does not have time- nor does she think they would listen to her.
Now that I think about it making clothes out of wrappers or sewing would be a good project. My sewing machine is small and portable.
For folks interested in hiring (or being) house sitter and/or pet setter, take a look at trustedhousesitters. Tis a service that friends were thrilled to find. They pay $200 annually to register, and then the pet sitter came and stayed in their house for free (to have use of the house). They live in a popular mountain area, and they “hired” a dog owner who wanted to vacation there with her own do. This feedback is a sample of one… would love to hear examples of this (or other similar service).
The above looks interesting especially if house sitting is desired, too. We use Rover.com and have had the same place in the country for all of her life, but usually we take her with us to the grand kids place…
I have a girlfriend who is doing in-home pet-sitting since retiring from her teaching job. She loves it! She is not affiliated with any company; she started doing it for friends and then her business has grown through referral. Her church has been the main source of clients - older retired folks who are in their go-go years. She picks and chooses the jobs she takes based on her own schedule. She does it mostly for fun money and IMO does not charge nearly enough. Her H does not do it with her - I think they both like having some separate time! She does a lot of reading when she is at a client’s home. And if the client lives close enough and the pet doesn’t need full-time care or companionship, she’ll come home during the day or come home for lunch and to do laundry, etc. I have not heard her speak of any negatives!
Editing to add that now that she has been doing this for two years, her clients are now checking her availability BEFORE they schedule their vacations/trips!
We gave friends with FOUR dogs, one of them quite “energetic”. Live in dog sitter is their only option. One time they paid their daughter to fly in and watch the dogs.
I used to think it there would someday be good options to get vacation “rental” via pet sitting barter. But really that would be a job best done by current pet owners with good animal expertise.
ShawWife has also gotten a lot out of cooking classes on Master Class. One of the best was a class on how to cook salmon from the head of French Laundry. Another one from the chef of Ottolenghi.
I would love a dog — we grew up with them but ShawWife is allergic. Dogs do make travel hard and we travel enough that figuring out what to do with them would be work. Our only pets are semi-wild Muscovy ducks. We do ask a few people to come over and feed them.
Part of what I hope we all do is to keep learning. My first learning project of the year. I decided to really explore what AI can do in my area of work. I’m taking an online courses at Coursera — the first is on prompt engineering. But I want to understand how to create AI-powered chatbots. I am going to agree to write a whitepaper on AI related to a subset of my field for a company. They probably won’t pay much, but it will forced me to put thoughts on paper. Lots to learn about AI.
Last fall, we had a friend visit. He’s a very well-known conservationist and a big thinker, who wanted to get help thinking about how to value intact nature. I assembled a group of distinguished professors and others and we spent a few hours on this (sort of a salon) and came up with some terrific ideas. We have turned that into something potentially very actionable related to a specific, very high value problem related to climate change. If the idea works, it would help the world in meaningful ways. I am going to devote much of my pro bono time to this project — fleshing it out to see if we can get support in the world and a lot of money behind it. Part of the notion is that governments move too slowly to affect climate change, so we need to create ways for entrepreneurs who move quickly to see a profit in a solving the specific problem/solution we have identified. It may also become a for-profit opportunity later.
I give a talk on how to think about career choices/career trajectories. ShawWife often volunteers me to give career advice to kids of our friends. I also gave career advice to the son of one of our friends. In his 30s. He has been a jack of all trades at some startups but mostly in an area that is a) consolidating; and b) can be automated. So he has had several jobs that have gone away and has been apply to jobs without success for months. Good kid, but he has been out of work for months. So, I said, Look, “AI is going to automate most white collar jobs and the one you were doing is entirely automatable. You have three choices in the new era: Be the automater, be the one who is automated, or be an artisan doing something with your hands that AI can’t easily do (arts/crafts generally but also the trades and hands-on aspects of nursing/medicine are examples). Given that you are unemployed now, use the time to become an automator of the kinds of jobs you had. Take a couple of courses at MIT/Coursera etc. Second, call friends at one of your old companies and offer to automate your old function for free or very little. Also, do a similar project out of that area. Then look for a job.” He enrolled in three online classes right away, called his friends, and was offered a job where he said he would automate the function. He’s going to call me on negotiating with the employer. Not all kids follow my advice, but his mother is thrilled/amazed at how energized he is now that he sees a path forward.
We have several neighbors who have been using trustedhousesitters.com for many years. One family started a long time ago, preCovid, and at least three other families have now used them successfully.
I was going to write something like this on the getting older thread (got too busy!) but it applies just as well to this thread. I think we are doing retirement well -at least for us. We retired on the earlyish side and decided that great weather, good community (friends, social), a chance to do some new things, and lots of opportunities to be active were important. So we looked for that and then picked up and moved to a warm state (5-6 yrs ago) for most of each year, and found a great medium size community. It is not an over 55 community -we have children on our street - but over 75% of people in it are. We have made dozens of friends (many of who followed similar paths as us but from other parts of the country) and several very good friends, and have a good and varied social life and feel very much part of a community within our community. We have explored new places, done new things and have opportunities to do more, and also to give. We are much more active than we would be if in our old area, covered in snow right now. Neither of us has ever enjoyed cold weather. The sun and warmth are great for being active outside and in good moods. We have role models here who are 15+ yrs older than we are who are wonderful inspirations. We also had role models in (our) grandparents who did similar things. I am in the middle of the introvert -extrovert scale and one time in my early adult years after a big move had to learn to make friends. Now I think I am good at making and keeping friends so that learning has paid off well in retirement life. Most of my husband’s friends were work related but now he has quite a few friends who share his other interests.
We also have been traveling a pretty good amount.
Is everything perfect? No. We have some more aches and pains with getting older so to speak. We still have some worries and challenges. We miss seeing our long time friends regularly. We are not in the same area as our kids and grandkids - not possible to be near all anyway since they are scattered around the country. We do see them all a few times a year and when we do it’s round the clock, as it was with some of our grandparents. But we feel very very lucky retirement is better and more fun than we expected, and in hindsight would have made the same choices.
I wouldn’t have someone only visit the dog. I want someone to stay in the house – and live their life, of course, like going out to do stuff without the dog – but unlike cats, dogs need companionship.
