Misrepresented dog?
Unfortunately this is the first stay I have booked through Rover and I am pretty disappointed. Somebody contacted me in the evening last week and told me that he needed to fly out of town the next day for an emergency and needs a place to keep his 4-5 month old puppy. There was no time to do a meet and greet because of the last minute nature of the request.
I asked if the puppy was crate trained and potty trained, because I would have raised my boarding price by $10-15 if he was not. The owner assured me that he was a great puppy who slept in his crate at night at home, went and sat by the door if he had to use the bathroom, had not had any accidents for weeks, and had even been in boarding while he went out of town previously. I offered to waive the puppy fee because he sounded easy to care for and I was told it was an emergency situation.
Well, this puppy is neither crate trained, leash trained, or potty trained. To be completely honest, I do not believe that he over 10 weeks old. It seems almost as though they picked him up from the breeder and brought him straight to me because he has been constantly crying and has had over 10 accidents. I have been home all weekend and the puppy has gotten to go outside nearly every 30 minutes, but he does not seem to understand that he is supposed to be going potty in the grass, not on my carpet. I have house broken several dogs and he acts the same way they do when they first come home. He is also not crate trained, but they asked me to have him sleep in his crate so he has been crying for at least 20 minutes when he first goes in at night and has woken up every 4 hours at least for the past 2 nights. When this stay is over, I will have effectively done all the initial training for this dog (which I would have been happy to do, if I had been told up front and paid accordingly).
To top it off, the owner tells me when he shows up, that he is actually driving down the coast to go to a music festival.
If I had this client when I used to pet sit privately, I would have either asked him to pick the puppy up after I realized he was not potty trained, or told him that he has not treated me respectfully and I expect to be paid a puppy stay fee of $15 extra. Because this has been done through Rover, I have no idea what the policy for dealing with this kind of thing is. I do not know what to say to this owner because I don't want a bad review on my page and I assume that Rover usually takes the ...