OUR “NICHE”…
…is long term house sitting, dog sitting and cat care – we stay with your pets while you’re away, giving them the comfort of their home environment, routines, and schedules (we will stay in homes without pets, too). We found home and pet owners planning long absences had a difficult time meeting their needs with friends, family, local sitters or other kennel alternatives, and, that’s where we can step in! Our engagements have taken us to Hawaii, both coasts and points in between, ranging in length up to more than 6 months — we have great flexibility in accommodating your needs!
BACKGROUND
Linda Sasenick and Jeff Sacco
We embarked on our housesitting journey after many years of home owning and conventional work (Linda had her own commercial real estate business for over twenty years, Jeff most recently worked to build a non-profit after a lengthy career as a sales executive).
We’ve always loved pets and traveling, but couldn’t put them both together until we “flipped” the paradigm — for us, house and pet sitting is the perfect opportunity to serve a need (being a trustworthy, caring “placeholder” during your extended absence), enjoy animal companions, explore new areas and make new friends.
Through our travels, we’ve cared for a wide variety of houses and pets — luxury beach house ocean front Hawaii with large outdoor dogs for security, urban houses with indoor dogs (large and small), cats and rabbits, hilltop homes with dogs, goats and chickens — all wonderful experiences, each with special needs to keep a consistent schedule and environment for the animals and companions staying home.
SCHEDULING AND FEES
We house and pet sit full-time, traveling between engagements. For this reason, we prefer stays of a few weeks or more. We do accept shorter-term bookings, particularly if they match up well with our current bookings. Check our Availability Calendar, and feel free to “Contact us” for your travel needs!
With regard to fees, charges are generally outlined below, but we do also consider other factors, such as duration of the sit, breeds, doggie doors, number and length of walks, diets, medications needed, overall degree of care necessary, gardening, yard work, safety of the neighborhood, how a sit fits into our schedule and so on. For that reason, we prefer to learn more about your needs to make sure that we are a good fit and that both parties would be excited about the sit — please feel free to contact us about your travel plans and expectations!
Our “standard” fees start at a daily base rate of $70/day, which includes one pet (cat, dog or other). We charge an additional $10/day for a second dog, and $5/per day for any additional dogs. Additional cats are $5/day (i.e. one dog one cat would be $75/day). Higher rates apply for major holiday periods – please contact us for a quote.
Our standard rates include “typical” household and pet care (watering container plants, collecting mail, walking/hiking with dogs, cleaning litter boxes, and the like) — if there are additional pets, special house, yard or pet needs, please contact us to discuss.
We do carry petsitting insurance, through Pet Care Insurance
- Use our “Contact Us” tab, or
- “Like” our Facebook page and message us at 5StarHousesitters!
- email us, either Jeff@ or Linda@ our web url, 5starhousesitters.com (to avoid scammers combing websites for emails, we have to make the address a bit cryptic – if it’s confusing, please feel free to use the contact page).