Ethan had a great stay at Mariya and Adam’s house. I feel comfortable knowing that Ethan was in good hands. He came home happy and content!

Mariya & Adam were not able to provide adequate care for Ollie and showed a troubling lack of proficiency and attentiveness as pet sitters. On day 5 Mariya asked us to find another sitter, saying Ollie had destroyed their mattress while being confined in their bedroom. We were told he had not been able to roam free in the house because he would “chew on everything”. This surprised us because Ollie’s never been a destructive chewer. I had to probe for more details, and it turned out he was actually picking up children’s toys (“thick sticks for a child's drum, sturdy stuffed toys”) and “plastic bottles including a bottle of Zicam". This response was astonishing/self-implicating for so many reasons: 1) it implied they confined Ollie because he was picking up things that to him are indistinguishable from dog toys/treats, 2) it revealed safety hazards (like medications) were left within a dog's reach, 3) I'm not sure why they didn't try to dog-proof the space better before sending him alone to a room or even ask us if that was okay. This caused him great distress and (somewhat unsurprisingly) led to the destruction of the mattress, and 4) it revealed they didn’t know a distressed dog will almost certainly show destructive behavior. Ollie also had a poop accident in their room (Ollie’s completely housebroken and had very few accidents even as a puppy, so that was quite telling on its own as well). We couldn’t help but feel the sitters couldn’t be bothered to do the right thing and treated Ollie as a nuisance, resorting to methods that suggested (at best) inexperience and a cavalier approach to pet care. Besides the safety concerns, we have also since learned that clutter causes stress and anxiety for dogs. No doubt that contributed to Ollie’s growing anxiety during his stay. We did not receive any concerning updates before the mattress incident, so I guess the communication was not great either. If they had communicated earlier, we might have been able to work with them to come up with a better solution than locking him up alone in a room (starting with https://www.rover.com/uk/blog/sitter-resources/dog-proofing/), not to mention warning them Ollie’s never been in a closed room by himself. I think both parties overestimated the quality of care M&A could provide with two young children and 2-3 other dogs around in a fairly tight space. They did mention they’ve taken Ollie on daily walks and played with him in the yard. They had a nice yard and a trail along a river which most dogs would enjoy. However, they'll need to work on constructing a safer, cleaner, and more relaxing home environment and come up with a more thoughtful approach to caring for pets and children together, or not offer the service at all. We received a refund for the remaining days he was not in their care, but the sitter also asked if we could help cover the cost of the mattress. We thought hard about it and even reached out to Rover for guidance (who said that was an assumed risk of the pet sitter). We decided paying for the damage wasn’t appropriate in this case since the damage was a direct consequence of the insensitive manner in which they dealt with Ollie. We were lucky a colleague of ours was available to take Ollie at the last minute; Ollie had a GREAT time with that family.