Do you take in dogs without meet and greet?

I would never take a dog without meeting them first, even if it belongs to a friend. It's hard to assess real behavior by just going off of what the owner says and sometimes they stretch the truth. You are responsible for their safety and ultimately you have the power to decide if you can safely achieve that even if it means losing money or a customer, it's much safer in the long run.

I always try to do a meet and greet before, but I have taken in a couple of clients without and it turned out fine. However, I did the same thing: I sent a list of questions to the owners to better understand the dog. Maybe I have just been lucky....

Personally I would require meeting a dog before saying that I would care for them simply because you never know what to expect. While the dog is in your care you are 100% responsible for it, so if something ends up not going well, you could be liable. Good luck figuring this out!

I do not take a dog without a meet and greet because you do not know what you are getting if you do not. Just because a photo shows a happy dog does not mean that it is a happy dog with other dogs. Just because the photo shows a dog within your weight range, does not mean that this dog is now in that range. It is always best to meet the dog and owner, not just to meet the dog but for your dogs (if you have them) to meet them.

Just remember, if you do not do a meet and greet and they drop off a dog that is out of control once they leave, you may be stuck with that dog. If you do a meet and greet, you get an idea of how the dog is and how it acts with the owner not in sight.

I do take dogs without meet and greet, but ask all important questions first. Some of them will lie to you anyway if they really need to you to petsit. If you are nervous about the dog, go with your instinct.

I always encourage meet and greets but sometimes the requests can be so sudden that there's no time. Always ask to at least see their vaccine record to make sure they are up to date.

I offer last minute bookings, so I understand there will not be a whole lot of time for meet and greets in those situations. I do believe that there is a place which you can indicate how many days in advance a booking can be made so that could help you. It's usually 50/50 on how good the dog is, but the worst one was an owner who contacted me at 11pm for next day drop off, that was the absolute worst experience I have had with a dog, but I think my low rates at the time also had something to do with that. But since then I will require at least noon the day before for bookings and be sure in those cases to ask as many questions as possible, if the owner is responsible they will understand that you are only try to make sure that you and the dog are a good fit.

I have taken almost all of my clients without a meet and greet, but I have my home set up really well. It doesn't matter if they are dog aggressive, or hyper, or barkers, or are not potty trained, because I'm set up to handle all that. The nightmare dogs do happen, but between us, there is very little I have experienced that would have come out in a meet and greet, anyway.
You can tell a lot by the dog's picture alone (energy level, etc.).

It's totally fine to do it this way, as long as you can handle problem dogs as they come up.

I did once, and I will never do it again! The owner was in a bind and needed to go out of town that evening. The dog was quite destructive with her toys and ended up consuming a piece and vomitting for the rest of the stay.

Owner's descriptions of dogs are unfortunately not always accurate, and they are based on the owner's experience with the dogs and not how the dog acts around strangers.