Discover important info on how to house sit in a foreign language destination: be prepared with safety tips for you and the pets in your care!
In this episode of Freedom and Four Paws, we share our experience around preparing for house and pet sitting in a foreign language destination – that is, for us, a place where English is not the first language spoken.
Watch on and discover some of our favourite resources, tips and tricks for learning the language, experiencing the culture, facing embarrassment, and importantly, surviving in an emergency or crisis situation.
How to house sit in a foreign language destination
Ultimately, our top five critical tips for house and pet sitting in a foreign language destination are:
Know where you’re staying. Make sure you have the address written down and with you both on your phone and on your person. This is important in case you you lose your phone or the battery dies.
Make sure you know what the emergency services number is in the country where you’re staying, e.g. 000, 111, 999.
Download key apps before you head off so they’re ready to go on the ground. For example, Google Translate, and your favourite language app.
Always ask what you should do if you get locked out, and what to do if the pet gets sick. Make sure you know what the plan is! Also that there are emergency contacts who will be able to communicate with you.
Just practice: give it a go, say hello, or hola, as the case may be.
We’d love to know what your tips and experience is in this space – let us know in the comments
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We’ve just come back to England after our house sitting Ireland assignment through TrustedHousesitters – what an experience! So far on this house sitting and pet sitting adventure we’ve met the loveliest people. From London to Northampton and then Balbriggan just outside of Dublin. It’s been refreshing, rediscovering the best in humanity.
Not to mention, we’re learning so much about places we’d never have even known to go to. Funnily enough, Northampton is known for its shoe industry. We then went to Balbriggan to house sit in Ireland, and this town’s famous for making hosiery! So famous, in fact, that this gorg seaside spot used to serve all the royals in Europe, including the Empress of Austria, the Czarina of Russia and Queen Victoria herself. A little on the history here.
Out and about: house sitting Ireland
In Ireland we house sat for Harley the Tibetan terrier, and his parents. We crossed with Harley’s humans right before they went on a two week trip to France (the reason we were house sitting in Ireland) and for a night when they came back. We had such a great time with them, leaving as friends. When they came back, we had gone to some effort to ensure the house was sparkling clean and that we had a meal ready for them. Part of showing gratitude.
Find out more about those tips:
Harley himself was a super quirky, cool, unique dog. We’re discovering a whole new world of personalities doing this.
Our love of dogs and experience with different breeds has been coming in handy, we apply it to a new situation everywhere we land. New things we’re discovering, especially with older dogs, is separation anxiety and also a stubbornness when they’re independently minded. Me and them get along famously [jokes]
Get yourself to Ireland
Ireland is famous the world over for being beautiful and the people are well-known for being funny, hospitable and kind. We can absolutely vouch for all of this.
It’s pretty easy to get started – sign up for a site like TrustedHousesitters. Get your profile and reference checks sorted, and then the fun begins.
If you’re looking for house sitting Ireland opportunities, set up alerts for the country, and keep an eye out for new listings every day. We’ve found that the sites can be competitive, so you want to be within the first few people to apply.
House sitting Ireland: top tips
Getting around
Ireland is not a huge country, so it’s possible to be able to plan seeing a bit of it around your house sitting assignments. There’s internal flights to main cities, and trains too. But once you get into the heart of Ireland you’ll probably need a car.
That said, we’ve not hired one yet. In Dublin the transport is quite good and you can walk a lot of places. We caught local buses to our pet sit/ house sit in Balbriggan which is an hour outside of Dublin. Our sit home owners got all the details on this to us prior to us confirming the sit – important, to make sure you’re right to commit. We needed to make sure we wouldn’t be so remote so as not to be able to get groceries and living essentials.
Leave time to explore
There’s so many beautiful places to go in Ireland. We’ve been lucky enough to explore Dublin, and further south around Killarney. Have a read of our guides (linked) and watch our videos for more information.
Ireland is brimming with experiences though. You can drive along the coast and discover all the little towns and ports, and go inland to meet more of the country’s characters. It’s possible to do it within two or three weeks. But we love spending time somewhere if we’ve got it.
Double check:
It’s important to check the dates you’re due to arrive (does your house sit need you a day earlier than advertised?). And what’s your plan on the other side? How will you get to your next destination? Do you need an extra night’s accommodation?
We’ve found home owners to be so lovely and helpful, which we really appreciate. At the moment we’re travelling and transport-less. Keep the lines of communication open and make your plans ahead of time.
Enjoy house sitting in Ireland!
Let us know in the comments if you have any other tips or questions. We’ve also got a whole series of videos on YouTube with advice on house and pet sitting. Subscribe and find them here.
Welcome! We are Sarah + Cooper, Aussie expats living in the UK with our Westie dog, London. We like to inspire on how to travel for longer and to live and work from anywhere. Our most popular content here is about seeing the world with your pet, remote working & digital nomadism, and house + pet sitting. Create a global life of your dreams at any age! Subscribe to find out more :)
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