This was my first time using house sitting through Rover, and I learned a lot from it. Looking back, there were some things I could’ve handled differently and things I need to improve on. There were also a few parts of this stay that didn’t go as I had expected in one way or another. Communication started off friendly, but a couple of days before the stay it got a bit more personal than I was comfortable with. During our Monday–Friday booking, I only got one update with photos of the dogs and cat. The updates seemed to get more and more limited as the week went on and with no additional photos. Now I realize, I should have communicated my expectations more throroughly. I would have liked a lot more insight into the daily lives of our pets while we were gone because they mean a lot to me. The sitter mentioned that one of our dogs wasn’t great on the leash and said he’d work on training her. He also pointed out that the other dog was yanking on walks, which surprised me at first, but I later realized he might’ve been referring to what he saw during the meet and greet and when he was with my son because generally on "walks" he doesn't yank because he better trained than our other dog. Chris told me he was taking the dogs on 2 to 3 walks per day, but when I asked him where he was taking the dogs for walks at, I was told it was just the short route we showed him for bathroom breaks at our apartment complex. I had just assumed a walk would have been longer to provide the dogs with exercise. When I walked in the door, our place looked as it had when we left and all the mail was brought inside. When I took our dog out to go potty, he was very constipated. It could have been for any reason, but it happens most frequently when there has been infrequent bathroom breaks or not enough time spent on the bathroom break, but I also realize next time I will need to be clearer about his needs. We've been home one day, and he's still not moving anything. Overall, the experience just didn’t quite meet my expectations whether it being from my lack of experience with house sitting or miscommunication. Although, he did leave the house in good condition and brought in all the mail, there were enough reasons that I wouldn’t book with this sitter again.

Great communication and lots of picture updates! Chris was great taking care of our two full-sized Australian Shepherds. Thank you so much for being available on short notice! Recommend, 10/10, would book again.