Like I would take 4 cats to a kennel, LOL.
We took our one to a vet's kennel. Well worth it, too.
The dog gets his walk and loving by the neighborhood girl. Short visits have always worked for me.
I would just see if the neighbor girl can do the extra. Or maybe she has an older sister/brother, or knows someone else who can do the extra stuff. I always took care of our neighbor's dog when they were away, locked up and everything.
JJust hard to believe someone would pay an amount close to my monthly mortgage to have someone spend at most 10 hours taking care of their pets.
Well, you have a very very low mortgage! Keeping that in mind might help.
Also, might consider pet-sitting as a career, if people pay that.
My older cat had to have medication every day. I think I paid $4/day extra just for that. When I called the guy mid-trip to see how things went, he told me the cat that needed medication hid from him 2 of the days, so he didn't give her the meds
So, sometimes you
don't get what you pay for.
You did say that 2 of the cats you have now would hide...cats are crafty. An ex of mine was asked to give a coworker's cat an injection each day while they were away, and it took upwards of an hour of trying hard to find the silly thing, each day. And that's with the two of us trying to find the cat.
I agree- I don't get the point of owning a dog if you are just going to leave them outside...why bother getting one at all?
Seriously, you let the poop pile up for 2 weeks? That's really gross.
Our malamutes did enjoy being inside every so often (in their den with their pack), but they spent MOST of the day and night outside and loved it.
Dogs *are* animals with fur and all of that; depending on what sort of dog she has it might be just as well prepared for being outdoors as our dogs were. Even the llasa apso we had for awhile (we found him wandering on a highway, and a year or so later after we took him in he escaped from our yard never to be seen again...we had named him Gypsy b/c of the wandering he was doing when we met, and it seems it was an apt name) spent ALL day and night outdoors, he was not an indoor dog AT ALL. So it's not just big dogs.
We had a big yard, and while I don't know we went 2 weeks, I know we weren't outside picking up poop every day, either. It dries fast when it's warm (I doubt I would leave poop out living in rainy WA, but when we had the dogs I lived in CA) and is WAY easier to scoop up once its dry anyway. Wasn't gross, and if it got gross at any point it was easy enough to clean up quickly.
I also wouldn't trust my cats in the house for 10 days...they like and NEED to go outside (for their welfare and mine!!).
You must understand that probably the majority of cats in America are indoor ONLY. To talk about outdoor cats, even partially outdoor cats, is to basically request that people freak out on you. I grew up with outdoor-only cats who were well loved and cared for, who both had to (lest they kill my mom b/c of her asthma) and chose to (they hunted and ate what they killed) stay outside. 3 of the kittens the mama cat had (pregnant when she found us) were given to friends with property or barns, and lived natural lives full of mice and extra food from their humans, and the outdoor cats I have been around have seemed much happier than the indoor-only cats I know, including the one we had, who was a neurotic mess and constantly tried to escape...
Anyway, I understand cats that go outside, but you're not going to find many here who do.
In all fairness, our cats are allowed indoors and are not "thrown out" the house; they sleep inside every night and can come and go as they wish.
