Adrian

About Adrian

Posts by Adrian Gibby:

24 Aug 2019

Amber, Scrappy & Felix

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The three rescues

My name is Amber and I\’m a bossy, affectionate mixed variety rescue dog from Greece. I\’ll lick you to death and love a scratch behind the ears. My favourite game is chasing Felix, the rescue cat around the house! I also love a game of chase with Scrappy the rescue also from Greece. My pet sitters think he might be a sheepdog cross terrier. He certainly likes to heard sheep as well as growl and bark like a terrier.

We\’ve all enjoyed having the pet sitters here to stay and have been to some interesting and different places. we even went to the old age home to cheer up the residents! We much prefer house sitters to kennels.

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6 Aug 2019

Nala
Which means beloved in Swahili

A beautiful Bengal cat the lovely Nala, waited like a dog to greet us at the door! Serene, soft, sleek, and silky to the touch, this lovely Bengal cat is very quiet, and timid and stays in the house and garden. No fences are required as she does not wish to escape, Caroline her owner loves her dearly and looks after her well, with delicious food to tempt her and a water fountain, cat flap, scratch pole, cushions and all, what more could a house and garden cat want?
Nala’s name is somewhat fitting, for she is a very beloved cat. We loved looking after her and received cuddles and purrs every evening which we thoroughly enjoyed.

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1 Jul 2019

Sniff Sniff Sniff

Photo by Marek Szturc on Unsplash

Many times I’ll see a dog owner pulling their dog away from a place with a really great scent! I wonder would you like it if someone pulled you away from the scent of freshly made coffee, a loaf of newly baked bread, or a bouquet of roses? Dogs possess up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses, compared to a humans 6 million. Part of a dog’s brain is specifically devoted to analysing scents, and proportionally speaking is 40 times greater than humans.

Dogs can detect odors in parts per trillion, Alexandra Horowitz, a dog-cognition researcher at Barnard College, in her book ‘Inside of a Dog’, writes; “While we might notice if our coffee has had a teaspoon of sugar added to it, a dog could detect a teaspoon of sugar in an Olympic-sized pool! “. Try listening to Alexandra’s very interesting Ted talk on how do dogs ‘see’ with their noses? Landmarks on lamp-posts, trees, stones, and pavements are an absolute story to your dog. When trained our dogs can tell you all sorts of things, they can help us find bombs, drugs, cancer, and many other things, so please just let them smell that scent on your walk!

Mark Scott from dog caring daycare; dog-stroll.co.uk actively encourages the dogs in his care to smell with the Sensory Garden he has created after attending a study on how dogs can self medicate. His sensory garden is a great example to us all of what we should and could do to keep our dogs interested and entertained with edible plants, tunnels, a straw pit, bamboo forest, and a willow dome. So if your dog is wanting to stop and ‘smell the roses’ then let them, you never know it may save your life one day!

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15 Oct 2018

What to consider when getting a free pet sitter

Do the people you are talking to about house and pet sitting have the following qualities: 

Are they pet lovers?

  • Do the people you’re considering for the job have previous experience of looking after animals, both domestic pets and farm animals – if this is required and do they naturally love animals of all kinds? 
  • Will they know what to do in an emergency? We have both trained in dog first aid which is very useful knowledge to have 
  • Are they local or are they travelling from far away – could they get delayed and can you deal with this?
  • It’s a well known fact that the most popular sitters love animals and may have previously had pets of their own, a lot of pet sitters use the opportunity to travel the world seeing places whilst getting free accommodation 

Are they trust worthy and willing to collaborate with you?

  • Is the prospective house-sitter happy to chat to you on Skype or WhatsApp so you can see what they are like? And visa versa.
  • Do they have references on the website your looking at – trustedhousesitters.com offers the opportunity to review the sitters as well as the home owners, so it’s a two way street 
  • Are they able to be flexible with their plans to help you to care for your pets and your beloved home? 
  • Are they willing to water the garden or collect the post and deal with emergencies 
  • We usually suggest that we arrive the day prior to the owner leaving, this is for the animals to get used to us before the owners leave and we also often stay a day later in case of delayed flights too, which has in fact happened to us previously 

Do they love exploring new areas?

Will the pet sitter enjoy discovering your area, and if so are you able to give them local maps and pointers to the best pubs and restaurants in the local area? So that the house-sitter can live-like-a-local 

Working independently 

Do your pet-sitters need wi-fi to be able to work and if so is yours high-speed? 

What does a prospective pet sitter want from us?

All a pet sitter usually asks for is – a clean home and dog, clean and comfortable bed, a pet inventory to tell you about the pets and home, some foods to start them off and some information about the area around the home and walks if it’s dogs they are taking care of. 

Where will you find a house and pet sitter? 

Look at trustedhousesitters.com or nomador.com to get your sitters, we personally are registered with both and also have our own website WoofWoofAway.com, there are other websites too, but as we haven’t tried them we are unable to recommend them to you. 

Wish you luck with your travels and pet sitters. 

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14 Oct 2018

Why we started house-sitting

When my Dad got ill and had to have a prolonged stay in Dudwell St Mary’s nursing home in Etchingham, my husband and I used to spend hours driving to and from Farnham to see him. Sometimes we would book accommodation which soon became very expensive over the months. 

In 2012, we started looking after dogs at our own home in Farnham via barkingmad.com. In September 2018, we decided to go from looking after dogs in our own home, to pet sitting in other peoples homes. We were hoping for house-sitting opportunities in East Sussex and surrounds, and we have so far been lucky to get these quite often. We’ve stayed in Tunbridge Wells, Heathfield and other lovely places which has enabled us to see dad quite a lot which is great. 

We started off fairly local, and enjoyed it thoroughly, both the opportunity to look after someone else’s pets and trying out their home and surrounds. Even though it wasn’t far from our home it still felt completely different and the walks and dog were superb. So we jumped right in and we now do this quite a number of months a year, just so long as we can continue to work from their homes. We don’t charge and this service, which is fairly normal, although I friends think we’re mad, as the idea is one of collaboration, we get your home and you get our services looking after your pets and home. 

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