Hi guys,
we're Annette (45) and Lars (49) and we're living on an old homestead in the country in Northern Germany. We have to two ponies and a tomcat living with us. And that's where you come in.
When we are travelling, we need a caring, animal loving, horse-experienced person to look after our four-legged family members and our home when we are away.
Your most important responsibility would be to look after our pets. While our tomcat Purzel (age ~5) is easy, as he mainly needs feeding twice a day, cleaning his litter box and some cuddles - if he trusts you enough - the horses (Gina, 30 and Granny, 29) require some more commitment. We clean our stables daily and also daily collect the droppings from the pasture. The ladies have free access to hay, so this needs filling up every day as well as the water buckets. In the mornings and evenings we fed them muesli with herbs, which needs some preparation before ready for feeding. As the ladies are of old age, they need medication and extra nutrients for different health issues such as arthritis and cushing syndrome. It is imperative to stick strictly to the medication plan. Sweeping is also necessary every second to third day.
The daily things I have to do around the stable take about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. The ladies would certainly enjoy some extra attention and a good brush.
Apart from keeping the house clean, it might be necessary to water the garden plants, depending on the weather.
Details will be, of course, discussed in advance. All in all you'll have plenty of time during the day to enjoy the peace and quiet of our lovely home.
Our home is an old farmstead with one main house, where my mother lives, and several side buildings. The building Lars and I live in, used to be a pig stable once. We have a large, combined living room / sitting area with open kitchen, where we spend most of the time during the day, if inside. The bathroom has a bath tub, separate shower and two hand basins. We also have a guests' toilet. And of course there's a guest bedroom, which is downstairs overlooking the garden.
The horses live in the former chicken house. We have a nice, manageable garden (the big lot's my mother's) and about one hectare of pasture for the ponies.
Our place is located between Oldenburg (10 km) and Bremen (20 km). As there's no bus or train close by, it's important to have a car or a at least a bicycle. Depending on where we're going, it might be possible for you to use my car (if you're at least 25 years old - for insurance reasons), but that's not necessarily always the case. The closest grocery store and train station is about 5 kms from here. The town center of Hude is about 8 kms away.