The best House Sitting website for New Zealand?

Do you want to enjoy meeting wonderful people and pets, while traveling to some amazing places? Housesitting and Petsitting is a perfect way of doing just that! Whether you wish to travel for a short-term break, or if you are a perpetual traveler like us, pet sitting offers you free accommodation in return for caring for the pets, collecting mail, watering the plants and providing security for the home!

Are you ready to start your pet sitting adventures in New Zealand? Great! But where do you find these amazing opportunities?

The Vet Around The World crew have been house sitting in New Zealand as our full-time accommodation, and we would like to share with you the best platform for finding Kiwi sits.

Kiwi House Sitters 

Yes - the name gives it away! Kiwi House Sitters is the largest house-sitting platform in the country, where you will find more available sits than on any other platform, including the big international sites such as Trusted House Sitters. We love how this site is set up, it made it so easy for us to secure our first house sits!

What makes this the best website for NZ pet sits?

• There are more New Zealand sits listed on this site every month than for any other platform.

• Their website is easy to navigate, and you can browse through the house sitting opportunities for free.

• You easily can filter the listings based on your preferences for location, dates, and the type of pets you are looking after.

• Reviews of both the home owners and the pet sitters are displayed clearly.

• Initial communication between the pet parents and the sitter is hosted on the site, making it secure and you have a record of conversations.

• They provide a template you can use to form a contract agreement between the sitter and the home owner, it is important to make sure all expectations are clear from the start.

What else do we like about Kiwihousesitters?

• Their platform has sister sites in Australia, Canada, America, Mexico and the UK so we can share our reviews on these sites.

• We can set up alerts so we get notified if a new sit is posted that match our preferred location and dates

• We can save our favorite sit opportunities to come back to in the future.

• House sit postings are not limited to the first few applicants, unlike other bigger platforms, so you always have the chance to put in your application.

What are the benefits of being a house and pet sitter?

Our full-time house-sitting journey started in 2018, and we have loved every minute of it! We have lived in some amazing homes around New Zealand ranging from Grey Lynne villas in Auckland, to 5-star converted barns in the rolling pastures of the Waikato, and even a mansion with views over the ocean and our own private beach in Tutukaka! But the best part is spending time with so many wonderful pets and their owners.

The smallest dog we have looked after was a 3kg Chihuahua who was keeping up with 5 kilometer walks at 19 years of age! The largest dog we cared for was a massive English Mastiff, who took up all the space on the sofa with his snoring 80kg body! And the cats…so many beautiful cats….Siamese, Birmans, Norwegian Forest cats and moggies of many colors and personalities.

The biggest dog we ever looked after!

Being a house sitter has many benefits, both for you and the home owners. You get to live in comfortable homes with all the amenities, without paying any rent or bills. You get to bond with adorable pets and provide them with loving care while their owners are away. You also get to experience different lifestyles and cultures, and discover new places and activities.

The home owners also benefit from having a house sitter. They save a lot of money on pet boarding fees, which can be very expensive and stressful for the pets. They also have peace of mind knowing that their home and garden are secure and well-maintained. They can enjoy their holiday without worrying about their pets or property.

House sitting is a win-win situation for everyone involved. If you want to try it out, you should definitely check out kiwihousesitters. It's easy to use, safe and secure, and full of amazing opportunities. You might just find your dream house sitting job on this site!

Cats prefer staying in their own home when their owners are away.

Doktor Blong Dog

Working as a Veterinarian (doktor blong dog) in multicultural Vanuatu is guaranteed to provide all sorts of entertainment, especially given my French is rusty, my Chinese non-existent, and the local Ni Van staff were laughingly teaching me Bislama.  I was the only vet on the island for three weeks, while the regular vets were on leave.  As you can imagine I have many stories to tell about this adventure!

My husband Graham accompanied me on this island adventure, and so I put his ship’s medic training to good use over Christmas, when I had no support staff available to help….

A puppy gets checked at the Vanuatu Vet Clinic -photo credit to the Vanuatu Vet Clinic

I was a little hesitant when presented with a dog fight victim that had a proptosed globe – yes its eyeball was not where it should be!  Graham stepped up admirably, acting as my assistant, theatre nurse and anaesthetist while we sutured with dog’s eyeball back into place.

Many of the patients I saw belonged to the expat community, who were able to pay for medications and treatments for their pets.  The concept of ownership is very different in the Ni Van communities – dogs are loosely attached to the communities in which they live, but often do not have one owner who can take care of their health and welfare.  Poorer villages struggle to have enough resources to meet family needs, let alone pay for the care of a dog, so while living on a tropical island sounds like heaven, the street dogs of Vanuatu have a hard life.  Scavenging rice, coconuts or food scraps while dodging being hit by cars on the often-busy roads.  Contending with burdens of parasite no Kiwi dog has ever seen…. pot-bellied with tapeworms, short of breath from Heartworm, and ear canals packed tight with ticks feasting on their blood.

Is it really a dog’s life, living on the beach?

One local dog was brought in because it was having trouble walking.  It was very weak on its back legs and needed assistance even to stand.  This dog was a victim of fish poisoning – it had eaten offal of reef fish containing ciguatoxins.  These toxins are produced by microscopic organisms that get consumed by reef fish.  The only treatment available is supportive care and nursing.  Sometimes the poisoning is so severe it causes paralysis, coma or death.

Luckily the Vet Clinic works closely with SAM’S Animal welfare, to ensure the local dogs have access to parasite treatments, desexing and medical care.  Local families would arrive at the clinic, where I could examine their pets and medications would often be provided free of charge, or in return for whatever donation the family could afford.  SAM’S also helps with fostering and adoption of unwanted or stray animals. They do a great job!

The Vanuatu Vet Clinic

Aside from the veterinary stories and the knowledge that we had done something to help animals and communities, we were also left with many fond memories.  New Year’s Eve fireworks and dancing on the waterfront, and giving high-fives out the window of our car to all the locals we passed as we did a New Year’s Day circumnavigation of the island.  There were even not-so-fond memories; 6-inch-long centipedes that seem to travel at lightning speeds across the kitchen floor!

Vanuatu is a beautiful country with beautiful, friendly people.  If you are visiting the country, do consider helping the animals of Vanuatu with a donation of money or supplies to SAM’S. Follow this link to their website:

Sams Animal Welfare Vanuatu | Supporting Animals In Vanuatu

Beautiful Vanuatu!

Thank you for taking the time to read this veterinary story of ours - we hope you enjoyed it and hope you will follow along on our future adventures!

A Life Less Traveled

It all began with an Idea. A Dream of Escaping from the daily grind of exchanging hours for dollars, and the perpetual creep of expenses keeping in lock step with any salary increases. A Dream of being our own keepers, choosing when and where we want to work, on our own terms. And a Dream of a life of freedom to travel and live a life somehow less ordinary, less ‘normal’.

But where to start? How can you escape the rat race?

For us, it began with House and Pet Sitting. We realized we no longer needed to keep paying high rents for a house just for the two of us, if we could find a new form of accommodation. We were offered a farm sit for several weeks, close to the vet clinic where Alison worked, where we could stay for free in exchange for keeping the house and lawns in order, and supervising twenty sheep and twenty goats. We had a marvelous time, and really enjoyed the antics of the baby goats who turned the rocky cliffs into a rural parkour course.

We are both wanderers at heart, not bound by a need for stability or security, instead we are fired up by the thoughts of change, travel and adventure! So we gave notice to our landlord, sold a lot of possessions, and moved a few things in to Graham’s mum’s place so we had a place to stay if we had gaps between accommodation bookings.

We haven’t looked back!

One successful sit and glowing review lead to another, and another, and another…. all based in our home town within commuting distance to Alison’s vet clinic. We learned to reduce the amount of things we carry, learned to adapt to new homes and pets routines, and have a wonderful time caring for cute cats and crazy dogs. Our house sitting has now become our full time accommodation, and we treat our pet and home care as a profession, looking after every animal and every house as if it were our own.

Our story will continue in following blog posts, where we share how we transitioned to a location independent income and lifestyle, where we can travel wherever we have internet.

Subscribe and follow as we share our adventures, and our journey to become full time travellers. We update our newsletter regularly with animal encounters, tips on how you can start house sitting or developing your own location independent life!

Thank you for taking the time to read this house sitting story of ours - we hope you enjoyed it and hope you will follow along on our future adventures!

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Can’t wait to get started as a house sitter? Get the best New Zealand house sits here:

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Want to House and Pet Sit anywhere in the world? South of France? Mexico? Singapore?

Browse the amazing sits at Trusted House Sitters