Leo

We watched Harris and Bonnie's dog Leo in the Sellwood neighborhoood of Portland, OR from July 14, 2023 to July 31, 2023.  It was a two week sit.

Leo was what they call a stub Australian Cattle Dog because he is shorter and smaller than the full size version.  He was 8 years old but very active still.  Each sit we have has a unique routine.  For Leo, he ate breakfast much later, around 11am.  In the morning he liked to go out into the back patio and we would throw him many rounds of ball in the back yard.  Every throw he would catch the ball and bring it right back to your hands and wait for the next until he was tired and would just lay down.

After ball, he would move on to his toys.  While we were there he rotated between three toys and even with those he loved to either fetch them or to tug-o-war with them.  He could do this endlessly through the day but he didn't overly force the activity on us either.  He could also be cuddly at times.

With it being summer, we wanted to do some active hiking in proper forests and so we took Leo on several bigger hikes of 3-8 miles.  He was good in the car and a good hiker.  We found that he liked to hike in between us and not really lead on the trail.  We did one hike that was two hours away and with it being 8 miles, we were gone with him the whole day and he loved it.  He sat at our outside table for a meal on the way back home.  He wasn't a big beggar or much of a barker either so it made it feasible to do so.

On the days that weren't a big activity, he had a routine of going across the street and up to the school field where he would fetch the chuckit ball until he got tired and then we would take a short walk and back home.  Some mornings Jeanne also took him on her morning walk on the days I went for a bike ride.

The two weeks really flew by fast.  We enjoyed our stay with Leo.  I guess he really missed us once we left.  We already have another sit scheduled with him in October and so we will see him again!

This was a formal Trustedhousesitter sit and our review can be found on the site but we have also added it to our reference page linked from the top post on the blog.  (contact info provided by request).

Rayna

We watched Carola and Forrester's dog Rayna in Happy Valley, OR from May 28, 2023 to July 9, 2023.  It was a full 7 week sit.  Rayna was a near 10 year old full sized black poodle.  She was one of the sweetest, smartest, well-mannered dogs we have ever known.  It was a pleasure to watch her and I am sure we will do so in the future too.

We took Rayna on many hikes both locally and out into the proper forest and lots of walks in her neighborhood which had a nice network of walking trails and a field we could use to play ball with the chuckit.  She loved her ball and was a part of both of her daily walks.

Rayna was very food motivated but she was always a good girl and didn't counter surf.  She loved to snuggle and was quite good in the car too.  Being older, we had to give her an assist into the back of our SUV because it was a bit high to jump into for her now.

One of the things that really hadn't occurred to us was that we would make a lot of new friends pet sitting.  Carole and Forrester let us stay during a gap in our pet sitting schedule and we have done dinners, hiking, biking and movies with them or with Toby's humans since our sits.  We really felt at ease watching Rayna and kept Carole and Forrester updated daily with photos and doings.  We would say that we will miss Rayna but really we will see her many times again now.

Here are a couple of photos of us doing things with Carole and Forrester after our sit and with Tim and Barbara after their sit.

This was a formal Trustedhousesitter sit and our review can be found on the site but we have also added it to our reference page linked from the top post on the blog.  (contact info provided by request).