Last Tuesday, we received two messages through THS. One from the system informing us that our second house sit in Indre is cancelled, and one from Ann, explaining that they had found Rintintin (one of their two donkeys) dead in the field. The remaining donkey, Joseph, was terribly upset, as were Ann and John. They were trying to find another donkey to keep Joseph company, but in the meantime had decided to cancel their September holiday, because they didn’t want us to have to deal with the situation.

We were quite shocked by the sudden death of Rintintin, and answered Ann and John to tell them that, and that we understood the situation and wished them all the best.

Oops…

Just now, I checked THS and had a look at Ann and John’s ad for their house sits to write a review of our house sit at their place. And loo and behold, they are looking for sitters for the period they cancelled on us! In the text, they mention two donkeys, named Rintintin and Joseph. And that the house sitters will have to clean out their shelter every day. So at least they’ve taken our advice there.

One lie leads to another

So Rintintin isn’t dead, they are not looking for another donkey and they have not cancelled their holiday. We are quite surprised by their action. Not so much the fact that they don’t want us back to house sit for them, because we clearly had no click with them. But why lie about it? And such a horrendous lie? They obviously never stopped to think about the way THS functions, for they didn’t realise we would find out their lie this easy.

Why?

It bothers me that they went through the trouble of making up this elaborate lie. I’d much rather they had been honest, because I would like to know the reason for their cancellation. I guess it’s the lack of connection we had. We took care of the house, garden, pool and certainly the animals, (we spent a lot of time cleaning out the shelter of the not-dead-after-all-donkey) and they seemed satisfied with that. Both in their communications over WhatsApp during their holiday, and upon their return.

Or did we really screw up? And if so, why didn’t they tell us? If we really are bad house and pet sitters, shouldn’t the world be warned about it? I’ll stick with the lack of a click as their reason for cancelling us, but I guess we’ll never know for sure.

To click or not to click, that is the question

We would have understood and been okay with their cancelation based on the fact that we are very different and therefore had no click with them. Which may sound strange, because why would you need to have a click with house owners when they’re not even there most of the time? But with the experience we now have, we recognise that it is important to have this click with the house owners. It’s essential I would even say.

So we’ve learned something from the experience, that’s for sure. And it leaves us free to fill our time in a different way, which isn’t such a bad thing after all.