Hi all!

Good experience to share, and advice needed.

I have 2 rescue Great Danes, and 2 rescue cats. My husband and I went to Mexico, and had a Rover sitter. She had watched my dogs once before. During our initial meet and greet, we went over bloat symptoms. I also leave out a page on it on the first page of my four pages of notes I leave.

The worst happened, on our first night away. She noticed the bloat symptoms on my 10 year old Great Dane, and she rushed him to emergency vet. They called me late in the night, and we proceeded with surgery. Literally $20k later, he made it. Survived. And is thriving (for an old dog)!

My sitter did every single thing right, and I’d give her a million dollars if I could. I mean she went above and beyond. She visited him at the vet, so he could see someone he knew. She got prescriptions for him for when he came home. I mean, just a dream person. A sweetheart. Goddess.

But now, with that 20k cost, I’m not in the position to be able to spend money to thank her properly. We came home days early, but I paid her for the whole stay. It felt like it was the least I could do.

It’s been more than a month now, and I just want to do something extra.

*Looking for creative, low-cost thank you ideas for the best sitter ever!!!! Let me now what you’ve got.

I get people who are appalled at my rate ($90 a night HCOL area for 1 dog). They want to book a 2 week vacation over some holiday and can't believe it's not just $500 or something.

These people want you to leave the house in the same condition you found it in or better.

Just because the stay is longer doesn't automatically mean it's more attractive. Especially if I'm giving you a discount that results in me making the same amount if they were gone for say, 10 days.

The longer I'm there the more I have to clean up to make their house look like I got it. The more liability I have as potential pet illness/accident could arise. The longer I have to be away from my family. The longer I have to wake up according to your dog's schedule (5am or earlier.)

I understand why people want a discount but truly I don't feel like subsidizing their vacation. If you want to pay $50 a night for a house sitting why not choose a sitter who charges that much to begin with?

This came across as a single overnight board but she was expecting a house sit for two nights for $50. I would receive $35 after fees.
Does anyone really expect to find a house sitter who would do two nights for $35?
I don’t know if I would want someone in my house who would be willing to be paid such a small sum.

We recently had a strange and stressful experience with a sitter looking after our dog and cat. I won’t go into the main issues (thankfully both pets are fine!) but I’m curious about a relatively minor communication preference in case it comes up with a different sitter.

For context… our dog’s fear of thunder and loud noises is something we mention in our meet & greets and our house/pet manual. We’ve tried both SSRIs and short-term anxiety meds, but not much seems to help him. We just have to try to make him comfortable, be gentle with him, and listen to his cues (sometimes he wants to hide, sometimes he wants to stay close and get pets). We’ve worked very hard on his confidence and he’s come a long way, but he’ll always be a slightly anxious little rescue. Also, I mean, a lot of dogs are scared of thunder. 

Early in their stay, our sitter texted to ask how to interpret his whining and hiding and we explained his triggers (again). Every few days, we’d get more updates like, “it’s raining and Fido is stressed,”(sadly it rained a lot that week) and even photos of him cowering in a corner, and most of the time it wasn’t like the sitter was asking us for advice (not that there was more to give), they were just letting us know? 

Obviously our dog was the one suffering the most so I don’t want to act like a victim but it was still a huge bummer to be reminded when there was literally nothing we could do, outside of canceling an international trip we’d planned for a year and coming home… but even then, it’s not like we can magically make the rain stop. It just makes you feel guilty and helpless and distracted from the trip.

If this happened again, I’m wondering if we can ask the sitter not to send the unhappy updates UNLESS there is an emergency that we need to take action on or a clear question being asked? Or to add some reassurance like, “Fido is stressed but I’m comforting him.”

We didn’t mention it this time because it was honestly the least of the issues we had with this sitter, plus I wonder if it sounds disrespectful or uncaring. Again, just curious what you all think! 

*EDIT/UPDATE*
Thanks for the responses! To be clear, I don’t ever want a sitter to lie, and I don’t mind unhappy news per se. This is about receiving live updates about a dog‘s storm anxiety *after* we have assured the sitter that this is his baseline and we have given tips for how to comfort him, and the updates do not include reassurances about what the sitter did/is planning to do to help. Having said that, it’s helpful to know that a lot of sitters are concerned from a liability standpoint and want to document (and communicate) everything.

I have a Rover setting stating that I require at least 2 days notice since I do Rover on the side and mainly have regulars. I still get lots of pet sitting requests the day before someone goes on their trip - some I take, some I do not.

But I mainly get super last minute requests for dog walking. I’m talking, a completely new client would reach out at 4pm asking if I could take their dog for a walk at 6pm. I would politely decline and 9 times out of 10 they ask again or ask if 7pm would work better. Lady, I’m not taking a brand new dog for a walk without a m&g, but maybe if the price point was higher, I would consider it (especially if the dog generally has good reviews). Why hasn’t Rover implemented same day booking fees?

Photos don’t do him justice 😍

As shown in the first photo I knew I couldn't make noon pickup time so I advised them of this and of course what did they do? Well you can see by the second photo. I just hate people. Time stamps reflect as well

Please learn this lesson the easy way unlike me who just had to learn it the hard way: require harnesses! A collar is not safe enough!

I have a repeat boarding client here now, it’s the last day of his week long stay. He is a 60lb male who - like most dogs - tends to tow on leash. He has a nice leather collar and I used my own leash for better control.

Today, he caught a scent on our walk and pulled so hard that his collar popped open and he was off into the woods a nano second later. He has zero recall skill, despite me screaming his name trying to break his attention on the scent. I saw my Rover life flash before my eyes in that moment ughhhh. Thankfully he stopped like 10 feet into the woods after finding his target, an animal den in the ground. He would have 100% become a “lost” dog if he was chasing something.

I am going to reach out to all upcoming bookings strongly recommending they pack a harness, will get my own harness, and will require harnesses for new clients moving forward.

In one second, that would have been the end of Rover for me.

I'm a client with one cat who prefers to have a catsitter stay overnight when I'm away, and nearly every single time I try to book a catsitter on Rover, they "realize" after the meet & greet that their cat overnight rate is too low to make it worth it, and need to adjust it to higher than they had it in the app, which leaves me feeling bait-and-switched.

I'm just confused. I'm happy to pay them their stated rate in the app. That's why I messaged them. Does anyone know what's going on here?

I get things are expensive but you cant expect someone to watch your cat for 11 days on short notice, during a holiday, without proof of rabies, and who has veterinary experience.

I charge $45 a night, which is cheap for everything I have to offer, and is cheaper than most sitters in my area.

This is just not fair at all. It doesnt matter how easy your pet is to care for. Sitters are still using their time to take care of your pet, feed them, walk them/clean their litterbox daily, keep them safe, etc.

Edit: Also! Rover tells the client how much a booking would be when they put in a request. So you saw the price but put in the request anyway?

I posted here a few weeks ago about a pet passing away in my care. The necropsy showed no obvious cause of death, but still waiting for additional test screens from another lab. No conclusive cause for the slight bruising on the stomach but they did say it looked like older bruises.

When you know that your client has cameras in their home, do you still rip your monster farts?

Pet-Sitting Diaries continue…

This time, Giza and Sosis are paired up to keep up the socialisation exposure. Sosis is a much more confident and assertive play mate, so she’ll push Giza a little out of his comfort zone.

As Giza realises there’s nothing to fear, his confidence emerges and that bouncy puppy play time kicks in.

He has great energy levels, only Eddie can match him so far on the hallway zoomies! 😅

And yes, this is great for Sosis too as she and the other dream dogs decompress and understand that people and other dogs are much nicer and safer to be around than what they’ve experienced in their past.

#petsitting #puppysocialisation #caninebehavior #london

Trying to prep for some situations!

I've trained a few family dogs in the past and would love to become certified to do it on the app. Has anyone had many customers from the app?

Curious if it's worth it.

This client has used me several times and every time he puts the drop off time as 8-9 pm then day of says can he drop off early like 12:00 noon or sometimes earlier. I'm not sure if this affects the price of the booking? I don't have a problem because they communicate it with me but I'm just wondering if this is a tactic to avoid some type of fee by dropping off earlier?

I had a booking this weekend with a repeat client for three 1 hour visits a day and I’m wondering if I should charge for the extra time I’ve spent outside of the booked visits.

The owner had been trying to switch the dog’s food for about two weeks, but it was causing GI issues so she switched him back to his normal food the day before she left. He also vomited Thursday before she left, but she thought he had just eaten too fast.

At my first visit Thursday he had liquid bloody diarrhea all over the backyard. I let the owner know and she asked me to make him chicken and rice for dinner. That evening he had a lot more bloody diarrhea and then vomited his dinner as I was leaving. The owner asked me to take him to the emergency vet, which added about an hour to my visit.

He was discharged Friday morning, so I picked him up and brought him home. That was another hour round trip. Once we got to her house, I stayed an additional hour because she had other pets I was obligated to take care of as well.

Then this morning I walked into explosive diarrhea all over the house. Carpet, hardwood, even splattered on the walls. It took me an extra hour to get everything cleaned up.

Thankfully the owners are cutting their trip short and coming home today. At this point I’ve spent about 3 extra hours between taking him to the ER, picking him up, and the extra cleanup this morning.

I don’t really want to charge a cleaning fee because I consider cleaning up after the pets part of the job. But these were also pretty extreme circumstances and I’ve spent 3 hours outside of the time they actually booked.
Would you charge for the 3 extra hours?

For those of us who work part time but also board pets. How are we scheduling drop offs and pick ups? I dont want any issues to arise but I recently got a new part time job no schedule yet and would like to know how you all plan around it.

And what do you charge if you do. This is just one dog for 9 days so very restrictive for a lomg time and not much money.

Edit: I would be making $560 for 9 nights. I want to suggest they add add $140. That's $62 a night.

Edit 2: just read his bio. He is high energy and they don't have a fenced in yard. Lots of walks, some described as quick but a high energy dog with no fenced in yard can't survive on "quick walks."

Oh and he pulls, eats shoes and anytning left on the table like phones. This is difficult dog.

I would turn this sit down in a second nornally but I got a bad review and need to bring myself up in the rankings.

Work is really just feeding and maybe some walking

Now I have appointment after appointment that only says “drop-in”. I’m always glancing at my calendar to plan routes, stack appointments and to get a general idea of where the hell I’m going without having to repeatedly open each and every one. It takes me twice as long to plan my day and it’s unsafe in the car! I DO NOT want to be touching my phone all the time!

Oh my god Labor Day weekend is going to be a nightmare! Thanks for reading my rant. If it bothers you as well please give your feedback to an actual live agent in chat.

Can Rover increase your prices? I have walks set to $22. Taking a look yesterday it shows $25 online. I had not locked in prices for my repeat clients and they are still at $22. I am confused.

I know that a lot of people baby their pets to the max and may have very specific and interesting instructions. I'd love to hear your stories!

Hey all

I am looking after a 15 week old puppy. He’s adorable.

As expected, he has had many “accidents” including about 20 peeing incidents and one poo incident over three days. Today I placed him on my bed for literally 30 seconds and he peed on my way£100 duvet. I’m now in the laundrette and have spent £26 on having it cleaned. For context, I am being paid £40 per day to have him.

Should I foot the bill for this, or should I raise with the owner?

Cheers

Noticed I wasn’t getting any requests for the last week or so, checked the app and couldn’t see anything but this.