So we were contacted by an owner that we had house sat before, to come and mind their gorgeous dog, at first I said no, long Covid had hit me hard, and house sitting just wasn't on the cards, but then we received a second message and decided to go to help them out.
We were told that they had been doing some renovations, but that the interior had been finished and that there was a few boards being done around the pool that was being finished off. They were also doing a garden roof over the top of the patio.
We arrived to see 3 levels of scaffolding around the house and builders everywhere. We'd been undersold on the sit, and had to wind our way underscaffolding to get into the house.
Nail guns and lump hammers were in action above our heads, not to mention the noise of all the construction.
Now a lot of people travel around house sitting, as they don't have a house. They go from one place to another, so they have somewhere to stay. However, we have a lovely home, and have been down the renovation route a few times, and have absolutely no wish to do anymore. Let alone stay in someone else's home to cope with theirs.
Anyway, suck it up, we were there, and the owners had gone away overseas, and there was nothing to be done. Three days later we returned from taking the beautiful dog we were minding for her walk. As I walked down the driveway to the construction site that was our house sit, I noticed a dog lying near the building works.
As I approached the house, the dog jumped up, ran down the driveway, placed itself across the driveway and bared it's teeth at us, arched, and raised the hackles on it's back. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that this is a massive warning from a dog that you are about to be attacked.
There's nothing to get the old fight or flight response going like the threat of attack. My heart went from calm to pounding in a moment. I called out to the workers for the dog owner to get the dog under control.
The long and the short of it, was we needed to approach the owners to tell the builder that the dog was not allowed to be on the site. They had known the dog was on the site. The tradies told us that there had been interactions like this for the past 6 months as the two dogs didn't like each other.
So between the threat of attack and the building construction, we were very unhappy chappies. We'd been house sitting since 2014, and this was the first time that the house sit had gone 'bad' for us. It's been such a shock that we're considering never doing it again.
So if you are thinking of house sitting, do take care, be alert to the fact that things may not be as they seem. If as in our case people say they are finishing of renovating, get them to send photos. if there's tradies on the site, make sure that there's no other dogs allowed.
