Pet sitting nightmares: neurotic dogs, needy birds, fleas and dead guinea pigs

PET sitting seemed like the perfect way to travel until Erin met a neurotic dachshund. But her experience is not the worst.

Pet sitting: It’s not always easy.

I’VE discovered what I believe is the perfect way to travel: pet sitting.

I joined a website that connects people who need their furry family members cared for while they’re away with those who are willing to stay and take care of them, and I’ve had some seriously amazing experiences: a home in a sleepy North Carolina town where wild deer would occasionally wander through the front yard, and an apartment in the heart of New York City with an unobstructed view of the Empire State Building.

I recently scored what seemed like the pet sitting holy grail: a penthouse in New York City with a private rooftop offering views across Manhattan. But I certainly had my work cut out for me with a neurotic dachshund who I’ve come to refer to as the Real Housedog of New York, and her equally neurotic owner.

Arriving at the apartment I was met by the hysterical barks of the Real Housedog, which I figured was normal as I was essentially an intruder. But after half an hour, RH was still yapping away. Then I got a text from the owner, let’s call her Sandra.

“How is she? Can you send a pic?” I wrote back telling her that Real Housedog was “getting used to me” and I began trying to take a picture of her. Pointing my phone at RH only agitated her more. My phone buzzed again. Sandra. “The pic please?”

I guessed the repeated requests for a photo meant Sandra wanted proof I really was there. Or, that I hadn’t managed to kill RH in the first 30 minutes. I briefly imagined the scenario of having to set RH’s lifeless body up in a realistic pose for the photo Weekend At Bernie’s style, edging a tennis ball into her mouth to make it convincing.

Dachshunds: They can be a bit posh.

I managed to take a photo where RH didn’t look crazed and sent it to Sandra. She replied with a link to a wiki How page on how to hold a dachshund. Which would have been fair enough (they can develop back problems if not carried correctly), except that we’d already discussed that.

I was beginning to understand how this dog had become so highly strung. I noticed a painted portrait of RH that hung on the wall, and I was impressed how the artist had captured a certain madness in her eyes.

A few hours later RH seemed to have accepted my presence although was not happy about it, and sulked in her bed while keeping an eye on me as I worked on my laptop.

I mustn’t have noticed when she trotted off to her ‘wee wee pad’ in the corner to go to the toilet, because if I had I would have recalled the warning from Sandra’s email of instructions for looking after RH (which included the item explaining the dog would not drink water unless it was from a specific coffee mug): “She will expect a treat every time after she pees or poops.”

RH sat at my feet and whined, before again progressing into agitated barks. I tried to pat her, but nothing soothed the increasingly feisty animal. She leapt up onto the couch next to me, and after a few more maddened yelps the dog lunged at me, mounting my left arm and trying to sink her teeth into my shoulder. Luckily I was wearing a thick jumper, so her small, pointy teeth were not able to penetrate it.

That’s when I remembered the instruction about RH expecting a reward every time she goes to the bathroom. She probably wanted her treat. No wonder this dog was a basket case, she lives in a world where she is celebrated for performing basic bodily functions and there’s an enormous oil painting of her hanging on the wall.

At least the RH experience prepared me for Sally*, a needy parrotlet who I spent a week with in yet another incredible apartment in Manhattan.

Sally desired attention so much that she would screech desperately every time I went out of sight from her cage, which was in the living room with a view straight onto the Empire State Building, no less.

This made leaving the room a Mission Impossible kind of situation where I rushed back as quickly as possible to stop her loud squawks. To her credit, Sally was affectionate and loved to sit on my shoulder or head. I didn’t mind, and even took a Skype call with her perched on my scalp, until one day she bit me on the shoulder for no reason at all, which put a strain on our until-then friendly relationship.

Who said my hair looks like a bird’s nest?

But my ultimately harmless experiences with RH and Sally pale in comparison to some of the anecdotes told to me by friends and acquaintances.

Travel blogger Jeannie Mark of Nomadic Chick thought she’d hit the jackpot when she was asked to pet sit for a cat in Amsterdam for three weeks.

“After a couple of days, I was in the shower when I noticed some odd bumps on my ankle. Soon I found more bites, until I noticed a tiny black bug clinging to my skin. The place turned out to be flea infested. Despite spending my time vacuuming, laundering everything and treating the apartment and cat for fleas, things only got worse — I found them in my clothes and even my toiletries bag.

“Instead of enjoying Amsterdam I spent most of the time combing the cat, vacuuming, washing and spraying, alone and stressed. By the time I left I had 52 flea bites on my body.”

Then there’s my friend Gemma*, who was looking after a cat when it had a terrible case of diarrhoea, leaving piles of excrement around the apartment which she was only just able to clean-up without vomiting.

But the worst has to be from my friend who accidentally killed the four guinea pigs he was minding for his friend who’d gone to his grandmother’s funeral.

“When I noticed they’d eaten all the grass underneath their cage, I moved them to a fresh patch. I didn’t realise I’d put them on soft ground that they could easily dig through. I came out one morning and there were guinea pig bodies lying everywhere. It was like a tiny, furry version of Reservoir Dogs. I took their corpses to the vet like a weirdo and they said it was stress-related. Apparently guinea pigs scare easily — they must have gotten out and seen something that frightened them. My friend returned home — fresh from mourning his grandma — and I only rubbed salt into the wound by having to tell him that I’d killed his pets.”

*Names changed.

Originally published as Pet sitting nightmares: neurotic dogs, needy birds, fleas and dead guinea pigs