How Animal Lovers Can Get Free Vacation Accommodations (and a Car)

How people use the apps, sites

After using a sitter through THS for their pets, Melanie Folstad, 55, and her husband, Rick McUmber, 63, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, had an aha moment when they decided to use the app to cut down on their accommodation costs when visiting their grown children. Together, they’ve sat for two cats in Seattle where their daughter lives, and Folstad recently returned from a solo Seattle sit for two cats and two guinea pigs.

“It’s different than an Airbnb,” McUmber says. “You’re just popping into somebody else’s life, and you see what kind of milk they drink … and we were sleeping, actually, in their bed.” He says the pet owners left them a “thank you” goody bag. If you approach sitting as “assum[ing] a different lifestyle for a little bit,” then it’s “kind of a neat experience,” Folstad says. They say those two pet sits over the past two years saved them $4,000 in hotel fees.

Jackie Van Anda, 70, is a novice pet sit-traveler, too. After a stint with the Peace Corps in her 20s and monthslong volunteer trips to Nicaragua and Malawi in her early 60s, she felt the itch to travel and be “involved in the local community … rather than going and staying in hotels and going to just museums,” says Van Anda, who lives in the Pacific Northwest. Using HouseCarers, she’s done a sit in southern Oregon and in British Columbia, both of which she drove to.

“It’s fantastic, and it’s my way to travel,” she says, though she knows pet sitting is not for everyone. “ ‘Good for you, but I wouldn’t do that!’ ” she says her friends have told her. She even brought her sewing machine. “It [was] like my own personal quilting retreat,” she says of her evenings sewing after spending her days picnicking in parks. Having secured a dog sit through Kiwi House Sitters for Christmas week, Van Anda is building a three-month-long pet sitting itinerary in New Zealand.

During a four-month-long cross-country adventure, Barbara Verba pet sits Rocky, a goldendoodle in Austin, Texas, in 2022.

Courtesy Barbara Verba

That’s how Barbara and John Verba do it. They’ve been pet sitting since 2017. Devastated after their dog died, they moved to Europe for a year after landing a pet sit in Edinburgh, Scotland, funding the trip, in part, by renting out their home in Asheville, North Carolina. Barbara Verba, 63, calls pet sit-traveling a “win-win. We get to have the company and companionship of pets, and we get to do the traveling that we [want] to do.” Using HouseCarers and THS, “Barb was able to secure about 76 percent of the days available with pet sits. Another 24 percent, we just had to find hotels,” says John Verba, 65. During their year away, they cared for 21 animals during 13 pet sits, he says.

Each winter, the Verbas hit the road for stateside travel. Having never been to Southern California, they built this year’s itinerary around a three-week pet sit in Laguna Beach. They scheduled sits for the drive to and from California. In addition to dogs and cats, they’ve cared for a pig, chickens, fish and a mouse.

Kiona Gross used a baby sling for Pippa, a cavoodle, in Sydney during a Trusted Housesitters pet sit.

Courtesy Kiona Gross

Kiona Gross, 53, says her pet sitting ways allow her to live “my second childhood.” With a part-time, remote job, she travels overseas about six months each year, using her parents’ house in San Diego as her home base.

Booking her sits through Trust My Pet Sitter and THS, Gross takes excursions during her pet sits, always getting permission from the owners to take the pets with her. During a three-week stay in Scotland, Gross took Harvey, a springer spaniel, with her for an overnight stay on the Isle of Skye. In Switzerland, Gross bought herself a rail pass and traveled the country by train with a cocker spaniel named Cooee. She calls the dogs her “built-in travel companion[s].” Though she usually pet sits as a direct barter, she recently did a monthlong stint in Northern California through Trust My Pet Sitter, caring for a cockapoo for $75 a night in a house on a cliff with views of San Francisco.