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Confessions of a Swamp Child: Why I Ditched Corporate for Critters (Yes, Even Your Goldfish). The blog.

Updated: Sep 30

Confessions of a Swamp Child: Why I Ditched Corporate for Critters (Yes, Even Your Goldfish). The blog.


Hi. I’m the person behind Hoomane.

(Plot twist: it’s not a fleet of pros in matching polos. It’s one weird, animal-obsessed goblin who never outgrew the “bring frogs into the house” phase. Sorry, Mom. Also, the carpet full of ants from the Great Ant-Farm Liberation in my childhood bedroom).


Why pet sitting? That’s the wrong question. The correct question is: why wouldn’t I? I was raised in the swamp (almost) between two tiny Eastern Ontario towns, which looked suspiciously like a nature documentary filmed on a shoestring budget. My childhood résumé includes:


Wading through ponds, swamps & forests like it was cardio.


Catching snakes, frogs, fireflies & leeches (yes, leeches — sticky little paparazzi).


Taming chipmunks with a pocketful of nuts & ridiculous patience.


Bribing jays & crows with peanuts for insider gossip.


Successfully (once) picking up a baby bunny & immediately being screamed at by my mom. Worth it.


Making friends with everything from skunks & groundhogs to coyotes & an annoyingly aloof bobcat I named Bartholomew.


If it breathed, blinked, or judged me silently, I probably named it, offered it a snack, & tried to convince it to live in my fort. Imagine a grimy Disney flick with zero musical numbers but a lot more mud & moral ambiguity.


People noticed. “Hey, Alison, can you watch my cat?” “Can you walk our dog this weekend?” “Can you stop our hamster from plotting our death?” (honestly, the hamster was the brains of the operation.) Those tiny favors turned into real gigs, which led me through the glorified chaos of professional animal care: managing a boarding kennel, surviving the humane-society rush, & even wrangling pets (& humans) managing a PetsHotel. My background is basically a tapestry of fur, scales & the occasional rogue feather in a weird place.


Then I detoured into corporate telecommunications for a decade-plus. Spreadsheets, sales targets, corporate-speak, the human version of a beige room. Turns out, convincing a nervous ferret to take its medicine has about ten times the joy of quarterly forecasts. So I did what any sane swamp child would do: I abandoned the corporate shackles & came home to the animals.


I hate corporate crap. I hate working for people. But working for animals? That’s my jam. That’s my calling. That’s 100% why I exist.


Now it’s just me: feeding weird diets, doling out therapeutic snuggles, delivering emergency nose kisses, coaxing anxious dogs into the small decisions of daily life, & ensuring your critters live their best, strangest little lives while you’re away. No policies designed by committees who have never held a guinea pig. No stiff rules that don’t account for a chinchilla’s gourmet hay preferences. Just pure, unfiltered animal adoration—plus a little chaos for seasoning.


Got a weird pet? A lizard with an existential crisis? A chinchilla demanding artisanal hay? A goldfish who silently judges your life choices? Bring them. Or, if you’re a fellow swamp child itching to learn, reach out & petsit with me. We’ll compare frog stories & argue about whether Bartholomew was actually planning a neighbour coups.


Hit me up.

Seriously.


Check out our boarding & daycare services — yes, even for the lizards, chinchillas & those suspicious goldfish. At Hoomane, every creature, no matter how peculiar, is family.


-a


come hang with us at hoomanepetcare.com & let’s make your pet’s tail wag (or whiskers twitch, or ears flop—you get it).


With fur, fangs & fight-the-system energy.

-hoomane.


Follow along & share w your crew.


instagram & facebook. @hoomanepetcare


blog(s). 


-a



ree

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