Long cruises.... How do you deal with your home, pets, etc?

[cruisin from florida]

With all the excitement about the world cruise, and our own travels beginning again, I was wondering how different folks take care of the homefront on longer trips and cruises. 

Our longer trips in the next year or two are between 3 and six weeks. 

We have an elderly dog with covid-aggravated separation anxiety. (Now that we've basically been home for 20 months, she takes attendance all day when we are here, gets very sad, lonely, and confused when we aren't.)

For our upcoming 6 night cruise, we have a friend who will house and pet sit, and that seems to be our best option - when and if we can find folks we trust to stay in our home. I'm not comfortable with strangers staying here.

 

How do you handle long absences from home and pets?

[DMWT Cruiser]

Because our senior (thirteen year old) canine family member now has separation anxiety, we are limiting our cruise travel to once or twice a year shorter-duration (six days or less) cruises.  He joins us for our other travel and enjoys the experience of visiting new places and staying in pet-friendly hotels where he receives lots of attention from staff and other guests.  On our last trip, a woman stopped us as we were leaving the hotel after check-out, saying to our dog, "Willie, you aren't leaving, are you?"

[cruisin from florida]

32 minutes ago, DMWT Cruiser said:

Because our senior (thirteen year old) canine family member now has separation anxiety, we are limiting our cruise travel to once or twice a year shorter-duration (six days or less) cruises.  He joins us for our other travel and enjoys the experience of visiting new places and staying in pet-friendly hotels where he receives lots of attention from staff and other guests.  On our last trip, a woman stopped us as we were leaving the hotel after check-out, saying to our dog, "Willie, you aren't leaving, are you?"

We bought a camper during the covid time so that we could still travel. We take the "pup"  with us everywhere we go. We went from Florida to Minnesota and back, and she was a very happy camper.

Our kids help out with dog watching, but they have their own stuff going on and aren't always available. It was really a relief when we found out that our friend could house/pet sit for our upcoming six night cruise. That got me thinking about next year when our trips start getting longer.

 

In the before times, when she was younger and not used to having us in the house all day everyday, our neighbor would come over a couple of times a day and all was good. But she's 2 years older now and has a whole lot of new separation anxiety.

Edited October 30, 2021 by cruisin from florida
Addition

[cruiselvr04]

We have a new fur baby.  I didn’t want another one yet as we are close to retirement and I wanted the freedom to travel.  So far our daughter loves her and we trade pet sitting with her. 
 

I did make the DH promise that the dog would not be an excuse to not travel like we want.  I already love her of course.  Hoping my daughter continues to love her.  Not sure what we’ll do when the trips last more then 2 weeks. Looking at a world cruise in a few years.  

[DCPIV]

The yard guys come every week whether we're here or not. They wouldn't know the difference. We have some great neighbors who are willing to look after anything else we might need (and we are happy to return the favor when they are gone).

 

If we're gone long enough to put a vacation hold on the mail and paper, that's what we do. Otherwise, our neighbors grab those for us.

 

We board our dog. There's a great place that's both near our home and inexpensive, and the folks who run it are as nice as can be. He loves the place and gets all excited when we drive up. It's always worth a chuckle when as he's going through the door, he looks back at us with a look like "Come on in! This is great! Let's go play!"

[Itchy&Scratchy]

My work friends used to pet sit our dogs, but their dogs are elderly now, so they cannot help. If my parents are coming with us and thus are unavailable to watch our dogs, we board the puppers through rover.com. We now have "our" rover.com person and we are very lucky to have him.

 

I have an elderly, going deaf dog who has anxiety and is very bonded to her sister. Her sister is an easy going social 9 yo pupper. The elderly dog is small and has fear aggression - she cannot be around any dogs over 20#.

A couple of years ago I boarded them at Pet Suites, and that was a disaster. It was loud, they got freaked out, shredded their nice memory foam bed, and they were confined to their cage except for pee breaks. Both dogs hated the experience.

So, the following year we found Brian on rover.com who watched girls in his apartment for the entire week. He sent us photos every day, took then on nice walks and even took the girls with him to his parents for Thanksgiving. Cherry on top? The price is the same as the boarding facility. But the girls got one on one attention, he played with them, and they even got to sleep on the sofa. He takes only one client at a time and has no pets of his own. 

We also hired him for our upcoming November cruise and will book him in 2022 as well.

 

 

By the way, the best advice I have for people with only ONE dog with separation anxiety is to have another dog for them to bond with. My elderly dog M is super bonded to her sister and cannot be without her. We call her a freakosaurus, because she is a hot mess of anxiety unless she is with her sister. Several years ago, before we adopted her current bonded sister, her previous bonded sister was dying of cancer in her old age. We knew we had to find a sibling for M before her sister would leave us. We were very luckly. M quickly bonded to her new sis and everything was well again. It's been 6 years and the well adapted social dog keeps M's anxiety at bay. They are so good together.

Edited October 30, 2021 by Itchy&Scratchy