We
sat for a Swedish family when we lived in the South of Spain. Krister (their owner) used to breed champion
dogs for show, and he was very particular on who he would allow to watch his
dogs because he could recognize right away if the dogs were not treated well
after their summer holiday.
We started
watching their villa and dogs in the summer of 2015.
They would go back to Sweden for 3-4 weeks each summer. They lived in a villa that was about 6 miles up in the mountains. As we didn’t have a car at the time, we used one of their secondary cars to get groceries and take the dogs out for their morning walk.
Two of their three dogs (Molly and Musa) were medium to larger size dogs. Molly was a Spanish Hunting dog that was a rescue dog. She was incredibly fast and very smart. She was wary of strangers, but she warmed up once you earned her trust. Musa was a combination of a Spanish Hunting Dog with Golden Retriever. He was very fast too but was also a bit of a boy scout. He would tell us if the other two were getting into trouble. Their third dog was Luki who was a small black mini-schnauzer mix. Luki was older but he would try and keep up with the other two and had a penchant for being the trouble instigator. All three were so much fun to be with. We miss seeing them.
Their villa had a pool and large patio with many plants and the dogs even had a lower acreage that they could go into if we opened the gate for them. We mostly took them out for a mountain run every morning. These were challenging because Krister preferred they be allowed to run off leash in the remoter parts of the mountain. That required us to take them early morning, usually around 7am, and load them into the car to drive them up some challenging dirt roads to a quiet place where we could walk and let them run. They would run and explore quite a ways and we had to be very diligent to ensure they didn't stray too far and that should a car, people or other animals also be on the road or nearby, we had them under control and behaving.
We kept the pool clean, watered the flowers and plants and maintained their gas and water while there. We always left the villa cleaner than when we got there, and they appreciated that. Over the years we were treated like family, and they were sad when we left Spain. They never allowed anyone else other than family to watch their dogs once we left even though we tried to provide some trusted friends to take our place. We really enjoyed the summers of 2015 through 2018 with them.
