A different way of life
We’re Nathan and Sam, the couple behind The Guardians Tribe. Our story starts in Tenerife, where Sam grew up and lived for around 25 years. Nathan had been living there for about three years when our paths crossed. We met, built a life together, ran a bar and later welcomed our son, Dylan, who was born on the island. Eventually, we moved back to the UK and settled into a much more conventional rhythm of work, home, school and routine, but over time that way of life stopped feeling like the right fit for us.
Discovering pet and house sitting
One of the biggest turning points came when we made the decision to take Dylan out of school and home educate him. That choice changed far more than just his education because it made us start questioning what learning could actually look like outside a classroom. We began thinking about travel, real-life experiences, responsibility, animals, culture, nature and whether education could become something lived rather than something separated from everyday life.
That was what first led us towards house and pet sitting. At the beginning, it was simply an idea that seemed to fit the life we were trying to create. It gave us a way to travel, experience new places and give Dylan a much broader education through real life, while also caring for animals along the way. We had no idea at the time just how much it would shape the direction our lives would eventually take.
Learning from experience
Over the years, we have cared for dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, guinea pigs, reptiles, fish, chickens and plenty of other wonderful characters, all with their own routines, personalities and quirks. Some were nervous and needed time to trust us, some were elderly and needed patience and a gentler pace, and some were young, energetic and determined to make sure there was never a quiet day. We learned about medication, feeding routines, behaviour, responsibility and, more than anything, how deeply people care about the animals they leave in someone else’s hands.
For Dylan, it became a very different kind of education. He learned responsibility, patience, confidence, adaptability and how to understand animals that could not simply tell him what they needed. Travelling from place to place also exposed him to different environments, people and ways of living, and for us it reinforced something we had already started to believe: there is no single right way to live, learn or build a family life.
The more we pet and house sat, the more we fell in love with what this world could offer. We met wonderful homeowners, formed friendships that continued long after a sit had ended and cared for animals we still talk about years later. But we also began to notice the gaps. We saw how poor communication, unclear expectations and a lack of proper trust could turn something that should have been positive into something stressful for both sides.
Again and again, we came back to the same thing: trust. House and pet sitting only works when people feel confident in one another, when expectations are clear and when everyone understands the responsibility involved. Yet too often, we felt that trust was simply being assumed rather than properly supported.
That idea stayed with us, and over time it became something much bigger.
Why we created The Guardians Tribe
The Guardians Tribe was never born from a boardroom or from a group of investors deciding what the industry needed. It came from living this lifestyle ourselves. It came from being trusted with people’s homes and animals, from seeing what worked beautifully, from seeing where things could be better and from countless conversations about what a house and pet sitting community could look like if trust, responsibility and care were built into it from the very beginning.
Eventually, those conversations became The Guardians Tribe.
Today, The Guardians Tribe is a global house and pet sitting community built around the belief that animals should come first, trust should be earned, expectations should be clear and people should be treated like people. We still house and pet sit, we still travel and we still experience the same responsibility that every Guardian takes on when someone hands over the keys to their home and asks them to care for the animals they love.
That matters to us because we never wanted to build something from a distance. The Guardians Tribe exists because of the life we chose to live, the people we met and the animals we were trusted to care for along the way.
Building something better
Tenerife started our story, home education changed its direction, house and pet sitting opened up a completely different world, and somewhere along that journey, The Guardians Tribe was born.
If you’d like to read the fuller story of how house and pet sitting changed our family life, you can find it here:
Or, if you’d like to explore The Guardians Tribe:
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Nathan & Samantha
Founders, The Guardians Tribe
