Middle-aged, animal-loving, multilingual couple available for house sitting!

About this sitter

Let me introduce us! My name is Gemma, I'm Catalan (born in Barcelona 42 years ago) and my husband, Stuart, is British, (born in England 44 years ago). We have been together for almost 20 years, and we have travelled the world as a couple. We live in Barcelona now, but we have lived in the United Kingdom and also in New Zealand and have been to more than 30 countries, from South America to South East Asia.

We are an easy going and friendly middle-aged couple. As well as travelling, we enjoy reading, watching films, listening to podcasts, gardening, nature, going for walks in the forest or the countryside and… animals! (I personally love donkeys; Stuart has always wanted to have chickens, and we absolutely adore dogs).

We have been volunteering at our local dog shelter since 2020 as dog walkers but also as a foster home. In 2020, we took in an eleven and a half year old dog (Rocky, the big, black Belgian Shepherd mix of the photos) that had been living there for six years because nobody wanted to adopt him. We fostered him until he passed away in 2022. Six month later, we started fostering a Staffordshire Bull Terrier mix (Guajira, our gorgeous Batwoman, take a look at her ears!) because she needed an urgent surgery. At the end of her recovery period, after we had nursed her back to health, we had fallen in love with her – she’s a very “zen”, sweet, loving dog – and we ended up adopting her. More recently, in November 2023 we took on Chase (the young, black Border Collie) because he was having a really bad time at the shelter, he was very anxious and needed a home, and he’ll be with us until he finds his forever home. So now we have two dogs that come with us everywhere!

We really enjoy gardening and plants in general. We are renting a little house with a garden that was very overgrown when we arrived, but we managed to clear two thirds of it and at some point we were even growing our own vegetables like lettuces, broccolis and cauliflowers. We are also the proud owners of several plants, big and small, so as you can see, we don't mind getting our hands dirty and into the ground if we have to! We will be very happy looking after animals, vegetable patches, gardens and plants of any type.

We are trying to lead the most environmentally friendly life possible as we are worried about climate change and the damage we are doing to our planet so we are almost fully vegetarian and we own an electric car. We also support several charities and generally strive to be good, honest human beings.

Regarding house sitting, we simply would like to spend some time in a nice environment where we can be useful to others and have fun at the same time, as we will be somewhere new and doing something different than when we are at home. We would love to find places where we could help by doing what we like: walking the dogs, looking after the plants, relaxing while reading a book, etc.

Why they want to house sit

We would like to house sit for individuals or families that need help with looking after their house and their animals while they are away from home as we understand how expensive, stressful and worrying it can be to leave them behind, even if it’s only for a few days, and use this opportunity to meet new people and explore new places in a more relaxed way than, for example, backpacking. (Yes, we are not in our twenties anymore!).

We feel house sitting could be a very rewarding and fulfilling experience that will allow us to travel in a more laid-back manner, as well as meet new people and share their live experience by staying in their homes. We are sure we’ll learn lots!

Their experience

We have lived together for 15 years and in this time we have lived in many different rental properties that all required basic maintenance such as painting, gardening and lots of cleaning! We have experience with house problems such as leaky toilets or water entering the house when it rains, we have either been able to fix the problem or to work with the landlady/landlord to get the problem fixed.

We don’t have experience as house sitters per se (yet!) but we have a tone of experience as volunteers.

Most recently, as explained, we have been volunteering as a foster home and dog walkers for our local dog shelter. We have dealt with lots of different types of dogs, from the most mellow to the most excitable, and to be able to foster Rocky - a dog that was known to be aggressive towards other dogs and people, (this is why he was never adopted) we worked with dog trainers and took lessons on how to handle difficult dogs. After working hard with Rocky, we could go for walks with other dogs and he became a very loving animal. We repeated the training with Chase, but this time we worked with the professionals to get Chase into our home in the less stressful way possible. (So, all of this, just to say, that we have a lot of experience with dogs!).

Our last volunteering experience in another country was in Estonia, where we worked at a sheep farm for two weeks. We helped the farmer and his family with a myriad of different tasks: we painted part of their house, we organised the hay to feed the sheep, we gathered and organised the wood for winter, we cleared their vegetable patch, we picked carrots and beans, etc.

When I was younger (Gemma) I spent three weeks in The Netherlands in a National Park preparing large fields for planting and looking after ducks, together with people from all over the world. It was hard manual labour but I enjoyed every minute of it. Stuart worked for years as a part-time gardener for several people in his community.

What can they bring to the assignment

We are a mature, responsible, relaxed and trustworthy couple who wants to help. We have experience looking after animals, as gardeners and also as volunteers.

Stuart speaks English and Spanish, and I speak Catalan, Spanish, English and French and can understand and communicate (although roughly!) with Portuguese and Italian people.

We know how it feels when you go travelling and have to leave everything behind, (we have done it many times) so we would love for the house owners to experience the peace that comes from knowing that their home, plants and pets are being well looked after by somebody they can trust.