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Traveling with Pets A Home Exchange Experience 

Family vacation travel 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 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! 

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Traveling with Pets 

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+ hotel surcharges) compared to the cost of a home exchange (zero), we quickly jumped at advertising our home for an exchange.

Family vacation travel 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 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! 

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, we wanted a house exchange during school holidays, within a days driving distance, preferably a Washington Home Exchange but we were open to a house swaps  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 swap we also chose to email other home exchange members within driving distance of our home. 

We did read that Global members could be contacted by any Global home exchange member or by any member of any other home exchange club around the world. We wondered why someone from another club would visit listings here. We were totally surprised!  We received emails from exchangers that were members of several other clubs besides Global. So why were they not finding exchanges with members of their clubs?

Nothing prepared us for the response to our home exchange ad and emails.  Over 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 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.  Then we went on-line and arranged travel information to be sent to us from the Oregon Tourism office.   Our Portland home exchange partners also left us numerous travel related brochures.

With the home-base for our house exchange in the Portland area, we explored areas of Oregon, the Oregon Coast and Washington.

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.

We are convinced that a home exchange is the only way to travel. A whole house plus a yard instead of a cramped hotel room and best of all, it was free travel accommodation.

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