Sitter asked to take a picture of me with my dogs. I am uncomfortable with this. We use the app to keep things professional. Why would a sitter need to take a picture of a client? Seems very odd to me.
My first thought is safety as well. I take my husband to sit outside first meet and greets.
I would say it would be for safety reasons. Most of clients have no info and no picture listed on their profile and the sitter has no clue who she is even meeting. Of course it's always up to you to hire her or not.
You should be asking this question of the sitter! And you can always decline
I agree with safety reasons, plus, heaven forbid, some catastrophe occurs (fire, dog escapes, someone claims it’s THEIR dog), there is a photo of you with your dog for proof of ownership. Most people who deal with finding lost or stolen pets say you should always keep an updated photo of you with your pets on hand.
These are all valid points. I was a client and now a sitter.
The only thing that would come to mind would be from a business sense if you are a repeat client at a business and they do a lot of business, they may need to keep track of who they are serving and who they are talking to. Like from a records organization standpoint. I know some businesses even create databases using client information, notes, contact, and photos (like YMCA, medical, etc) to keep track of things. Personally, I would think even if someone were to do this just using a photo of the dog would be sufficient as that is who you are taking care of. Probably more appropriate if they had their own business rather than for Rover who prides itself on anonymous information sharing like alternate generated sitter and owner contact numbers for their monitoring.
I would definitely ask the sitter. I'm sure he/she would not be at all offended if you asked and they may have a very valid reason. If it's someone with whom you haven't done a Meet & Greet with, they may want to be able to verify your identify during the Meet & Greet. If you've already met and/or booked they could be into scrap booking or, as someone suggested, like to have a copy for their records. It could be that this is one way he or she assesses if it's a good fit - while you're coming at it from the perspective of "why would she want that" maybe he or she has the perspective of "why wouldn't they be willing?". As a sitter, we are opening I have asked potential clients that don't have any pictures of them or their dog to either add to the profile or send to me so that when they arrive for the Meet & Greet I can verify their identity that way. As the others said, you can absolutely decline to meet with this sitter or choose to not book with them because you think it's odd. Sometimes it's just a matter of different perspectives; I was a Rover client before sitter and if one of my sitter's had asked I would have asked why out of curiosity and, unless it was something that I thought was inappropriate would not have had an issue providing. That's just my opinion though. :) Good luck!