In the past few years, dogsitting apps have become a popular way for dog owners to have their pets taken care of while they’re away.
That said, dog owners haven’t always had the most positive experiences with these apps. For example, one user claimed that someone she hired off of a dogsitting app lost her dog, while another said she caught a dogsitter lying about how much time they spent with the animal.
Now, a user on TikTok has people questioning their use of such apps after sharing her terrifying story about hiring a dogsitter.
How a Rover experience ended in lies and 2 lost dogs
In a series of several videos, and one video summarizing all of the available information, TikTok user McKenzie Leigh Comfort (@mckenzieleighc) explains her nightmare experience with the popular dogsitting app Rover.
According to Comfort, she and her partner had been using Rover for a few months. Up until that point, their experience with the app had been neutral to positive.
At the end of August, Comfort says that her family had significant travel planned, and that her daughter was recovering from a surgery that made her very sensitive to sound. As a result, Comfort decided to use Rover to find a home for her dogs for about three weeks.
Soon after, she began receiving photos of her dogs from the sitter, implying that everything was fine. However, by the third week, things had become different.
“We stopped getting photos, and they were still communicating with us every day,” Comfort recalls. “But we would ask them, ‘We want to see the dogs. We want to make sure that they’re good,’ and they kept giving us excuses of, ‘Oh, I’m just not home yet’—blah, blah, blah.”
What did the Rover sitter do with their dogs?
When the return day finally came, Comfort says she received a message that baffled her.
“We get the most insane text message from this individual from the Rover app that says something like this: ‘Congratulations. I just dropped your dogs off at their new home. It’s a seven acre property. The owner is a 55 year old cancer survivor. They’re going to be so happy. You guys are making the right decision,’” Comfort says.
Panicking, Comfort responded questioning what the person was talking about, insisting that she had not asked for her dogs to be rehomed, and asking for details about the property where the dogs had been placed. The sitter’s answers were inconsistent, and so, she reached out to Rover for assistance.
“We contact Rover, we tell them what’s happening, and they tell us, immediately, ‘Oh, this person is already banned from the app, and there’s an active open police investigation with them already. So when you guys call the police, they’re already going to have a file on this person. Go ahead and call them right now,’” Comfort states.
From there, Comfort got in touch with the police, to whom she provided a statement. Then, she began joining missing dog groups to see if anyone had spotted her pups.
Sure enough, someone had been posting pictures of one of her dogs, as it had been found on the street in Scottsdale, Arizona. Comfort got in contact with the person posting the images and was able to locate both of her dogs, though they had been “running around…Scottsdale in the 110 degree heat for three days.”
Not an isolated incident
Through discussions on Facebook, Comfort says that she was able to determine that the sitters, who Comfort says are named Gina and Gabe, were apparently “known on Rover and in the community for losing dogs, and people have been letting him continue to do this through these different apps and through these different sites.”
Comfort theorizes that the sitters had simply lost their dogs five days prior, then invented a story about rehousing them as a strange attempt to resolve the situation.
“I would not recommend Rover. I would not recommend Wag. I would definitely recommend, if you’re a sitter or a walker on those sites, to start building your own clientele,” she concludes. “We have the dogs—they’re home, they’re safe, they’re happy. But watch out out there, because people are crazy.”
@mckenzieleighc ♬ original sound – McKenzie Leigh Comfort
Commenters weigh in
In the comments section, users shared their own experiences with dogsitting apps like Rover.
“I quit using Rover after my dog got a horrible gash to her neck that cost 3k+ in vet bills and the sitter couldn’t tell us what happened,” wrote a user.
“My rover sitter left my dog in a crate for over 24 hours. Would not let me get my dog the day we communicated a pickup (cause she wasn’t there and out of town),” added another. “I could hear my dog barking.”
“Our Rover sitter never showed up after her 1st visit and our dog was unfed and outside all night. Rover had no answers or back up plan to help,” wrote a third. “Luckily we had a family friend assist us.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Rover via email and Comfort via email and Instagram DM.
Update 9:08am CT Oct. 31: In an Instagram DM exchange with the Daily Dot, the Comfort stated that the police were investigating the issue and that the person has been removed from the Rover platform, but that she is not content with the resolution.
“I think the individual should be penalized for his negligence, especially because we now know that we are not the first family he has done this to and he has lost other dogs without any consequences,” she explained. “Someone sent me a Craigslist listing he posted in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he is still actively seeking to dog sit.”
“For Rover, I assumed more vetting was happening before a candidate was allowed to list with them, because their site does a lot of advertisement about their ‘trusted’ sitters, so I think they either need to distance themselves from the sitters and encourage users to be more proactive in their own vetting and getting references from the sitters themselves OR do an actual interview with the sitters and when a negative review comes in, temporality ban them under the investigation is complete,” she added.
“I also think that once a user gets banned, that their prior customers should be notified so they know not to use that individual again if they were to pursue them off the app,” the TikToker concluded.
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