Traveling with Pets on a Home Exchange

Family vacation travel at our home includes our pet Bichon Frise dog. In past vacations we chose hotels that would accept pets. This year we noticed many of these hotels were now charging a non refundable premium from $10 to $75 per night just to have our pet stay in the room with us. This was on top of the $70 to $150 per night hotel room.

The more we looked, the more attractive and cost effective a house exchange appeared. We could stay in a multi-roomed home for two weeks, choose to cook our meals there or eat out and best of all the total cost for vacation accommodation was zero. Free accommodation for our entire family!

Swapping homes for vacations seemed ideal for our family, but could we take our pet along? After weighing out the cost of staying in hotels for two weeks, plus restaurant costs ( $1500+) compared to the cost of a home exchange listing ($35), we quickly jumped at advertising our home for an exchange.

We placed our house exchange listing in early March hoping that someone would respond by late May. As we live in a smaller, out of the way community we thought few would be interested in exchanging homes with us.

We were very specific about our desired travel needs. We wanted a house exchange during school holidays, within a days driving distance, preferably a Washington Home Exchange but we were open to a an exchange in Idaho or Oregon that would accept a pet as part of trading homes and that had a house that was large enough to take a family. In addition to advertising our house exchange we also chose to email other home exchange listers within driving distance of our home.

Nothing prepared us for the response to our home exchange ad and emails. In two months we had 18 offers to swap houses from pet lovers all over the US and Canada. We were amazed at the response! We had home exchange offers from Boston, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Sacramento, Seattle, Honolulu, Toronto, the Oregon Coast, Bellevue, Montreal, Phoenix and a number from BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan Canada.

Offers included people who had no pets but were open to looking after our dog in our home while we visited theirs, people who would let us take our dog to their home and some who asked if we would mind looking after their cat and in return we could either bring our pet with us on exchange or leave him at our home in their care. Most amazing where two separate responses inviting us to use their home, even though they wouldn't be traveling to ours. Both had other plans for vacation and didn't want their homes left empty.

Deciding which house exchange offer to accept was a challenge. After a few emails we arranged a home exchange to Oregon.

With the home-base for our house exchange in the Portland area, we explored areas of Oregon, the Oregon Coast and Washington. We saved additional money by mystery shopping. Mystery shopping on our trip provided us with free gas, restaurant meals and some additional cash.

We got to bring our pet with us and enjoyed a quality family home exchange vacation that we hope to repeat often. We even came home from our vacation with money and a smile on our faces knowing that we wouldn't be facing credit card bills for two weeks of hotel accommodation.