Who cares for your animals when you are away?

Since we know no one here, we'd have to kennel the dog and the rabbit. Sometimes we take the rabbit with us. The kennel costs $10 to $20 a night plus the dog needs shot certificates before being accepted which normally includes an appointment fee. Right now the dog doesn't even have a vet so the first trip would have a lot of expenses associated with it.

Cat sitter comes in. She feeds/waters the cats, takes care of the litter. $15/day. Brings in mail/paper, waters some plants.

I have a doggie door in the laundry room, so the dog can let himself out to potty.

My parents live ten minutes away, so they come over once a day to fill food and water bowls and scoop out litter boxes.

We only have a cat now, and we leave him alone for the 9 days we're gone. We set out several bowls of food and water and the litter box is just quite full when we get home. We've done this our whole lives and it's always been fine.

The only time we had a problem was when we had our dog for 2 years. We took her with us on 2 vacations. We made sure we found pet friendly places (we rented houses both times) and she traveled well. She even rode the ferry with us when we went to Door County WI. We did need her to be watched for 2 days over the period of my DH's mother's funeral and I just took her to a friend's house. She had several kids who loved dogs and they didn't have one, so it was fun for her kids for the overnight, but I wouldn't have asked her to do it longer.

The two major trips we take every year, where we are gone for 5-7 days, is to visit dh's family. We stay at my MIL's and take the dog with us, it's no big deal. If we camp, we take him and he sleeps in the car.

 

When we go out of town for shorter trips, for 2-3 nights, we usually take the dog to my parent's house and they watch him. If we go somewhere for one night, he stays home and a neighbor/friend comes over and lets him out and throws the ball a bit. We have never kenneled him, it costs about $50/day here and he is a pretty emotional breed so I'm not sure how he would handle it.

 

Our cats stay home by themselves. If we are gone for more than a few days, we have a neighbor/friend stop by and give them more food and water. They're easy.

My parents or if we go on a trip together we have a friend of the family to come and do it for both of us.

When we went to Disney,  MIL took care of our cat and dog.  She made the comment that instead of going to Disney World she got to scoop cat poop.  I guess next time we'll find a different cat sitter.  My dog ate her rose bush.  It was not a good week.

 

On our trip to VT, we took our dog along and found pet friendly hotels.  We could not find a sitter for her.

 

We usually do long weekends and we have a friend that LOVES our dog.  She has already claimed him for all future vacations.  He follows her around and sleeps on her feet.  The cat has two litter boxes and is fine while we are gone for a few days. 

My parents travel quite often and I watch their pets so usually when we go out of town they return the favor with the help of my DH's family.

This is one reason we don't go any where.