Lock Down 2020 – a Time to Pause and Reflect
Hello everyone,
This is the first time for 33 years that the Animal Aunts office is closed for anything other than Christmas, Easter or bank holidays. I find myself alone in the office as the team are “furry-loughed” and HQ is locked down. We are in the middle of nowhere so barely see a soul from one day to the next.
When I started Animal Aunts back in 1987 with the Government enterprise Allowance Scheme, I never imagined I would still be running it 33 years later, but here we are and living through an interesting and scary part of history.
I have a team of over 300 amazing Animal Aunts, many have been with me for decades, who, out of the blue, are now grounded along with the rest of the world. They are such an amazing and talented team with experience of the widest range of animals from domestic to livestock to exotics. They are incredibly hard working and dedicated to every single one of the animals in their care and they are all desperate to get back to work. When working they travel all over the country keeping the homes in their care in perfect order, gardens ticking over, tomatoes watered and of course the routine of the animals kept precisely.
When we first started, the life of an Animal Aunt was a great deal more isolated than it is now. With no internet, social media or mobile phones there was no contact with the outside world except when one popped to the shops. Nowadays we have the comfort of communication to make it easier. Imagine if we were locked down and had no internet or phones!
So life has changed forever, what will happen next?
When will the world start to travel again we ask ourselves? What will be the new normal? When will we be able to start work again and get on with doing what we love?
I never imagined when I started house and animal sitting in 1986 that other people would love the job as I do, but we have hundreds of Aunts past and present who have made it their careers, putting their hearts and souls into each and every booking. The very first Animal Aunt to ever come for interview is still an Animal Aunt today!
I feel so proud of the Aunts on the road and how adaptable and caring they are, how they are ready to step into an emergency at a moment’s notice and how they go out of their way to help their Clients have peaceful, happy and relaxed holidays or business trips, days out, weekends away, they give their clients the freedom to travel.
Every day I speak to Clients who are determined to get travelling again, they are hanging on to their July and August bookings in the hope that they can still go. We can only all wait and hope that the lock down is successful and we can move into the new normal.d how adaptable and caring they are, how they are ready to step into an emergency at a moment’s notice and how they go out of their way to help their Clients have peaceful, happy and relaxed holidays or business trips, days out, weekends away, they give their clients the freedom to travel.
In the meantime, here I sit alone in the office, it is a beautiful spring day and mother nature is marching on regardless of the pandemic.
Let’s keep all paws crossed that we get through this safe and well. Sending much love to you all.
Gillie x
Filled under: Animal Aunts, Aunts, Cat sitting, Dog Sitting, Horses, House sitting
Tagged with: Animal Aunts, catsitters, Coronavirus, covid-19, Dog-Sitting, dogsitters, horse sitting, House sitting, lockdown2020, pet sitting, petsitters
