Anila was very flexible & agreed to watch our 3 dogs & 2 cats without a meet & greet, which we were thankful for, because she was out of town when we put in the request. Our regular sitter was not available. In hindsight, I wish we had the ability to do a meet & greet & probably won’t be booking with Rover sitters in the future unless we can. We were only away for two days & I had a phone call with Anila, emailed care sheets for each pet prior, & had them printed for her upon her arrival. Our animals are easy, make sure they have food/water twice a day, let the dogs outside in the yard when they ask, don’t even need to clean the yard or our cats litter boxes since we were gone for a short period of time and could do it when we got back, keep our youngest dog in her crate if she’s unsupervised, etc. We even took measures to make her weekend easier by moving our oldest dog’s (10 year old, Dane) bed downstairs so she didn’t need to worry about getting him down the stairs because he doesn’t see well & is hesitant. I guess at some point he got upstairs when the gate we have was left open. And in order to get him down the stairs she used dog bones we have on the kitchen counter that I didn’t put away (which was my fault for leaving them out). We normally don’t give them to the dogs unless we can watch them to make sure no one chokes. Everyone was ok, but I still probably would have asked before just giving the dogs something we didn’t talk about (we were in communication so I would have answered). She also reported to me that multiple accidents (urinary and fecal) were had. 4-5 in total over just two days…. From the pictures it looked like it was not just from one of our dogs either but multiple. I politely let her know that was abnormal & I tried to provide tips/ask questions to determine why. Her response was that “she finds that hard to believe.” I can assure you we don’t have 5 pets in our home going to the bathroom inside on a daily basis. At least one of the times she admitted she fell back asleep since she had let them out early that morning & the dogs were unsupervised/likely were not let out, that would explain why. She also admitted that she left for an unknown amount of time and did not crate our youngest dog despite our instructions & thankfully all she did was tear up the care sheets we left & didn’t get into anything else. Lastly & perhaps the most frustrating/worrisome. I told her before we left multiple times that our cats, one in particular, would try to slip outside if the door is left open. Mind you one of our cats is a Sphynx so he was VERY expensive and wouldn’t do well if he got outside given the fact that he has no hair. He doesn’t do it to us because he knows we’ll catch him, but he tests his limits when we have guests or pet sitters. We have a bird feeder in our yard that has a camera to help us identify the birds on the feeder & despite telling her before the visit and multiple times during the visit, we could see she left the back door open presumably because she did not want to keep getting up to let the dogs out (they don’t just go to the bathroom out there, they like to play and hang out outside too so they do ask to go out frequently & we don’t have a doggy door because we live in an area with wildlife/birds of prey & we don’t want our cats going outside. At one point it was left open for over 10 minutes. She told us she had eyes on the cats, however, that is not the care we asked for. Aside from the pet sitting: she wanted to use our washer and dryer & I had clothes in there. Instead of asking, she moved my clothes, used the washer/dryer & then let me know after the fact. I ALWAYS let our sitters use what we have in the house, but I feel like asking first is probably polite? This way I could have made sure my stuff was put away & had everything ready for them. And our microwave short circuits if you open it while running & can’t be used until we pull it apart and change the fuse…. So we keep a post it on it for guests that says “DO NOT OPEN WHILE RUNNING!” And despite the notice, she broke the microwave, which we now have to fix. And she did not say anything to us about it. Just be honest. Were our pets alive when we got home? Yes. Did our cats get out? No. Are we sure they got the normal care they do? No. Were we more worried than we should have been for just a weekend trip? Yes definitely. Just wanted to post a detailed review so you can determine if Anila’s level of care is appropriate for your needs & your pets needs.

Our doggies were so happy! Anila did an amazing job staying at our place and playing with them!