I outlined several benefits in my previous postings that home exchanges bring. Here is another one for you: With people in the house, you can rely on it that your plants will be taken care of. Just like you water theirs or mow their lawn.
And if you’re a pet owner, your precious pet doesn’t have to
go to a kennel if you find pet lovers who are willing to look after it. In case you own a pool, your swap partner will not only enjoy it but also take care of it.
We don’t have pets but inherited a few willy-nilly when we
found an aquarium with fish in one house and a pond with fish outside. The
exchange partners Versailles, at the last minute, announced a rabbit that needed feeding
but ignored to mention a guinea pig. As an ex farmer’s wife, I didn’t mind,
but these two were fighting all the time when they were left in an outdoor free range roaming cage together.
You can’t really go away overnight with pets to
feed. So from then on, I asked potential swapping partners several times if
they had pets. Unless they lie like the couple on the houseboat in Amsterdam
who pretended not to have pets. They "forgot" to mention the dog they had taken to the kennel for the vacation time. OK, technically, there was no pet, but the boat, however, was infested with fleas. And stupidly they had left multiple cans of “vluyn spray” standing around:they didn't even bother to hide the evidence!
I haven’t put you off the idea of home swapping, have I? What's one
bad egg in a basket of a wonderful dozen otherwise? We are undeterred! Intrepid -- as the name suggests.
