pet care

[Video] Bill The Housesitter’s 2017 Clients – From A to Y

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This is just about a comprehensive collection of all the pets I looked after in 2017 as Bill The Housesitter.

With the exception of a few fish and hamsters. And several chooks.

It literally is a collection from A to Y.

As I was compiling these photos, I realised I’d inadvertently put them in alphabetical location order: from Algester (Qld) to Yeppoon (Qld)!

In housesitting years gone by, I could have told you at any tick of the clock how many housesits I was up to for that year at that point in time.

But 2017 was such an absolute mess, I totally lost track along the way.

Just now, I’ve used a very scientific method (i.e. counting on fingers as this video ran through its paces) to come up with the definitive count for the year: twenty three (23).

From Machan’s Beach (Cairns) in the north to Baulkham Hills (Sydney) in the south.

(2017 housesit locations. Not pictured: Baulkham Hills (Sydney), New South Wales.)

So, with a little favourite music in the background, and arrayed in alphabetical order, here are my feathery, furry, and finned clients of 2017:

Here’s to 2018 and all who sail in her!

Bill Quinn
Bill The Housesitter

Sydney, New South Wales

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[Reference] Housesit in Oxenford, Gold Coast (An energetic boxer cross and a whippet cross)

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This is the blog section of the Bill The Housesitter site. See above tabs for ‘About’, ‘Availability’, ‘Contact’ and ‘References’.

On the face of it, Oxenford was an ideally-suited small jigsaw puzzle piece, slotting in nicely between Ascot (cats) and Capalaba (dogs).

Rather than on the Gold Coast itself, Oxenford is in the hinterland, very close to the big theme parks that are the draw card for the area. The locality sits right on top of the Gold Coast Motorway (which I variously refer to as the Gold Coast Speedway or Car Park), so it’s also very much the dormitory suburb for Brisbane.

The couple were very open about the fact that the place would be a bit bare bones because they were in the process of selling up and moving interstate. I was relieved to hear that the Foxtel Sports would be very much still in situ while I was there.

The only fly in the ointment of the eight day housesit came three days before I was due to arrive. At about 6.30pm on Wednesday 10 August 2016 as I sat in Ascot, I got the terrible phone call that my mother Mary had just died in Westmead Hospital in Sydney, just three weeks shy of her 80th birthday.

Mum had not been completely healthy all of her life, and epilepsy had added a very challenging dimension to her life from the age of 46 onwards with regularly irregularly visits to hospital, including a lot of ICU, and a few administrations of the Last Rites.

I mention this only by way of thanks to my hosts who were very understanding of my need to absent myself for a day during the week for the funeral. They also made their second car available for me to drive down to Gold Coast Airport. That was a rather long, big travel day. Up at 4am, collapse back onto the couch at 10pm, after a drive, fly, train, walk, bus, lift, lift, walk, train, train, fly, drive day.

But all that aside, it was a very relaxing week with my two little tour guides for the area. The house is on an estate where the infamous Russ Hinze used to have his horses. In the valley of the Coomera River, there are some lovely walks along its banks, and the streets are quiet and safe.

We never had a routine; we just went roughly in the same direction every time, doing a loop down to the lake and back by the main access road to the riverside parks.

Apart from that, the little whippet was very ball-oriented, so we spent a lot of time in the yard with the ball-chucker (that’s a plastic aparatus, not me! My shoulder is slowly getting back to scratch after the November 2015 accident. Well, not accident. Me pretending I’m 19 again: how does that sound?)

It was a quiet and contemplative week, and a shame I won’t get to go back as the household is transplanting itself hundreds of miles away.

This is the reference they left me on my Bill The Housesitter Facebook page:

Bill house sat (more importantly – dog sat!) for us for a week in August 2016.

Bill made the effort to meet us and our dogs prior to the sitting. Our girls were happy and relaxed upon our return.

We invited Bill to stay the first night of our return, before he moved onto the next house sit the following day. This was a great opportunity to know him better. He spoke fondly of the pets he had cared for as he described many pet personalities he had met. We would recommend his services to anyone needing a house sitter.

 

Bill The Housesitter dot com Video #9: Dog Training Lite

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This is the blog section of the Bill The Housesitter site. See above tabs for ‘About’, ‘Availability’, ‘Contact’ and ‘References’.

Nothing really much to say here except that it’s a delight to spend time with these two dogs, and we use a few little training tips every day in play and walking time.

Here’s what some of it looks like.

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Bill The Housesitter dot com Video #8 Part B: Wide Open Dog Park

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This is the blog section of the Bill The Housesitter site. See above tabs for ‘About’, ‘Availability’, ‘Contact’ and ‘References’.

One of the great joys (of the many to be had) when you housesit is when you strike upon a winning formula with two new furry friends from the get-go.

I’m here in beautiful Capalaba, south east of Brisbane, a short drive from the coastline including Cleveland, Raby Bay and Redland Bay, with Wynnum and Manly a little to the north. It’s then a hop, skip and a jump to the ferry terminal down south for the islands: Stradbroke and Russell to name just two I can think of without consulting a map!

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Raby Bay. Image courtesy of www.peterbellingham.com

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[Reference] Wavell Heights, Brisbane (One very expressive sharpei cross and a low maintenance budgie)

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This is the blog section of the Bill The Housesitter site. See above tabs for ‘About’, ‘Availability’, ‘Contact’ and ‘References’.

My house-sit in Wavell Heights was one of a few I’d lined up while still in Sydney, so it was great that a few people like Samantha and Dan were prepared to take me on, sight unseen, before I had even arrived in the great south east of Queensland back in February 2016.

(And it’s also a testament to the value of collecting these references, and I offer my sincere thanks to everyone who has provided them for me.)

Like a good one-third to two-thirds of the places I visit, I’d never heard of Wavell Heights before I lobbed there in June 2016. Put a gun to my head and there’s no way I could have pointed to it on a map of Greater Brisbane.

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Like most of my canine companions, Gus had zero interest in the Tour de France.

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Bill The Housesitter Video 7: Postcard From Burleigh Beach

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This is the blog section of the Bill The Housesitter site. See above tabs for ‘About’, ‘Availability’, ‘Contact’ and ‘References’.

It’s been a while since the last blog post and video here. So long that I’m currently under roof #12 for calendar year 2016.

This evening on Burleigh Beach, as I was trying to simultaneously drink in all the scenery and document it to within an inch of its life, I realised this was prime video material.

Et voilà!

I can’t tell you how much I adore drifting up and down the Burleigh promenade. Yeah, it’s tourist central, but this is mid-winter.

I adore it.

A hive of activity, people of all ages, nationalities, and descriptions. And I have more conversations and shared moments here on one evening’s walk than in some whole weeks elsewhere. Continue reading →

A Day In The Life Of Bill The Housesitter by Overheard Productions (Bill Quinn)

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Sergeant Schultz und Colonel Klink Mit Wilhelm Quinn Fur Ein Tag
Sergeant Schultz und Colonel Klink Mit Wilhelm Quinn Fur Ein Tag

Welcome to a Day In The Life of “Colonel Klink” und “Sergeant Schultz” von Liverpool, New South Wales, Australie.

Those are not their real names and the location given is the area rather than the actual localité.

Today I want to show you what a typical day…. wait, scratch that. I do not have typical days and neither do the pets.

NOT having a routine is a good thing for almost all sentient mammalian beings. Unless that being has severe chemical or physical or mental issues, in which case, the more strict the regime the better.

That is not the case with these two. Sure, Klink has traditionally been extremely anxious, and Schultz has had some real challenges in his lifetime, on the whole those have been nurture issues related to their environment.

And let me make this plainer than plain: it is NOT to do with the house and the others in it. The two homo sapien friends of C & S have provided a loving, caring, diverse, well-looked-after-without-over-pampering household.

BUT, on all three sides, over all three boundary fences are extremely nervous dogs with some severe behavioural challenges. And haven’t really fully clapped eyes on them all yet, but sight is not a sense needed to come to that conclusion.

That is not a problem; it’s an opportunity. I have been in-house friends with these two Germans now for three weeks and 3.6 days roughly.

Even in that time, I have NOT taught them commands or tricks or behaviours inconsistent with how I found them. BUT they have both calmed down considerably. Bear in mind that this is THE first time they have both been separated from their significant others who have significantly less fur.

Let’s begin.

Earlier on Woensday nacht before I ducked out shortly to the shops
Earlier on Woensday nacht before I ducked out shortly to the shops
Schultz: if he were any more laid back... no, I don't see how that would be possible!
Schultz: if he were any more laid back… no, I don’t see how that would be possible!

05:36 AEDST, Thor’s Day 29 Oktober (Festen?!) 2015 Continue reading →

Bill The Housesitter Video #2 – Bill, What Do You Do?

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This is the blog section of the Bill The Housesitter site. See above tabs for ‘About’, ‘Availability’, ‘Contact’ and ‘References’.

People often ask me, Bill, what do you do?

You’ve got this Overheard Productions thing you say is a home-based operation mostly, and then there’s the house-siting. Can you provide salient examples and unpack the minutiae of your routinus caninus and entertainus (here we are now, entertain us).

Here within and thereto under, I pledge thee a trough. For the dogs’ water.

Here’s some moving pictures. (♪♪♪ What about me, it isn’t fair ♪♪♪ — True story. I house-sat next door to Gary the guitarist from Moving Pictures last year. Gave him some copies of my articles in Trad and Now magazine. He was rather impressed at my advice to artists article.)

Please press <PLAY>…

Here’s the result of the investment of about 20 minutes of my time in the wee small hours before this was shot:

 

Click on picture
Click on picture

Bill Quinn
Bill The Housesitter
23:36, Tuesday 20 October 2015

Holsworthy, New South Wales, Australia

[Reference] West Wollongong, New South Wales including reference

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This is the blog section of the Bill The Housesitter site. See above tabs for ‘About’, ‘Availability’, ‘Contact’ and ‘References’.

West Wollongong
West Wollongong

This week-long house-sit straddled the start of October 2015 and came to me like manna from heaven. Book-ended by two x six week house-sits, it was an eight day stretch that was potentially going to be tough to fill, and possibly expensive if it meant heading to a youth hostel for the duration.

So when it bobbed up on a house-sitting web-site, I was onto it like a seagull on a chip.

It’s a good example of how sometimes a bit of mutual trust can work out beneficially for all concerned. The home-owners took me sight unseen, as they were flying out of the country the morning I was finishing up north of Newcastle. I used the NSW Transport Plan Your Trip site to plot this transport solution:

And strike me, with eight possible fail points, I arrived at the front door at 15:27!

You have to be a little wary of letting yourself into a strange place with a strange dog at the door, even a pint-sized one. The little Jack Russell took one look at me and seemed to think, ‘Right, well, I’d best be showing you around, then’, and we set off to the backyard to case the joint.

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[Reference] Corlette, New South Wales – Two energetic Cavoodles

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This is the blog section of the Bill The Housesitter site. See above tabs for ‘About’, ‘Availability’, ‘Contact’ and ‘References’.

Corlette, New South Wales
Corlette, New South Wales

My house-sit in August to September 2015 was in a locality I’d never heard of until I saw the ad. This happens quite often!

Corlette, New South Wales is at the end of a peninsula above Newcastle, bounded by Port Stephens and the Pacific Ocean, about an hour’s drive to Newcastle and two and a half hours to Sydney. Outside of the peak holiday times, it’s got the laid-back feel of a coastal resort, with the demographics skewed to the older echelons.

It was quiet in my street, though the daily fly-overs from the nearby air force base were noticeable.

My charges were two Cavoodles, one a Cavalier cross toy poodle and one a cross miniature poodle. Corlette, Nelson Bay and Salamander Bay are very popular with -oodles of all varieties and we met many out and about on our walks.

This was one thing that really struck me about the region: I’ve never met so many friendly dog-walkers so up for a chat. Some people said this was a characteristic of a rural area, but I’ve been in some country areas where people are hard-pressed to give you the time of day.

Either way, I got to talk to scores of people out and about during the five+ weeks I was there.

Apart from the regular walks to the marina at Nelson Bay and around the hilly streets of Corlette (much of it new and under new development), there was the enchanting Tomaree National Park. A walk to the top of Tomaree Head was breathtaking but worth it.

Tomaree Head
Tomaree Head

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