Sitting Part 2: Animals, Animals, Animals

Over the last 6 months we have watched 15 dogs, 10 cats, 4 goldfish, 4 llamas and 2 horses. Each with very specific needs and schedules although Nick has successfully shifted everyone’s schedule to his. Unique traits included:

• A dog that jumped out of a second story window, fortunately a week before we started the house sit and fortunately unharmed.  
• A 12 year Labrador with diarrhea, also fortunately survived our sit (the most normal dog but maybe it was just because he was a labrador).
• 2 indoor cats living in a 55+ retirement community near the home of the Yankee Candle headquarters, the home even had a candle with the aroma of a “California dog beach” called Sand+Paws.
• A neurotic Australian Shepard mix that we couldn’t stop from constantly licking the kitchen appliances unless we played endless fetch in the backyard.
• 2 indoor cats with an elaborate catio and multiple hiding places in the house so that we spent the whole sit searching for them.
• A “barn” cat that we needed to search for each night to bring in before the coyotes found her.
• 2 horses that we were unqualified to watch, one of the horses got a severe case of pruritus (itchiness) that required 22 Zyrtec a day, and a daily Aveeno moisturizer rubdown yet we all survived.
• A spaniel with very short legs who needed her genitals wiped every other day, which the owner had spelled as gentiles in the instructions.
• 2 small dogs that took over our bed each night by amazingly turning into 1 ton boulders that could not be moved when sleeping horizontally across the full sized bed. 
• A cat who belonged to those 2 dead weight dogs, that we rarely saw because the owner had built an elaborate tunnel system for the cat utilizing the house duct system-because after 2 years, the dogs still terrorized the cat.
• a Min Pin (she looked like a bloated chihuahua) , who eats primarily coleslaw and frozen vegetables tossed onto on the floor so she can remember being a street dog (raw cabbage? maybe the bloat is understandable). 
• 2 Shih Tzu rescued from puppy mills, one who goes into the bedroom closet to howl for several minutes once a day, the other one was missing an eye.
• A house with no pets except pantry moths and mice, but we did have  a list of chores from the owner including clearing rain gutters, moving a compost pile, and clearing the house of pantry moths and mice. So, a pest sit.

We do not know the names of the fish, but can you match the names to the dog? Stella, Dulce, Scout, Smokey, Nala, Harry, Darby, Izzy, Monty*, Roux, Osito*, Charley, Benji and Wendy. (*grand-dogs, so not really dog-sitting). Answers at the end of the blog.

And the larger mammals Pearl, Phil, Mac and Delphine plus Winston and Cocoa.

Plus the cats, can you match again? Lagatha, Simon, Piper, Edward, Taj, Tucker, Hazel, Mini, Kit Kat, Pixel and Taz. (Absent: Clementine). Answers at the bottom of the blog.

And finally our pest sitting whose names we did not know.

We did not have an opportunity to pet sit them, but we did visit our other grand pets and did not want them to feel left out.

Answers to the match:

Dog names start at the bottom with one-eyed Stella and zig zag up. Cat’s names start at the top each line, left to right. The feature picture at the top is probably our favorite dog (not including the grand-dogs), Chocho (with Nick). Chocho invited us to watch him again in Valencia, Spain for Christmas so of course we are.

Anyone need a sitter? Just tell us where your pizza cutter is before you go.

Want to know more about where we sat https://chosenfugue.wordpress.com/2022/10/29/sitting-part-1-location-location-location/