4.5

Had a little trouble with consistent communication, but she did a good job caring for our dog.

She was Awesome! Excellent communication and very accommodating for our dogs needs and dates and times. She sent dog updates and pictures too. I even think she gave him a bath and brushed him out. She also let us come pick him up late after hours when we got back into town. We will certainly repeat.

Best person I’ve ever booked with! Can’t wait to book again.

Giselle was flexible and sent updates throughout my pups stay! Loved that Nikita had another dog to play with.

Giselle was fantastic! She made sure to give me plenty of updates and showed me my pup was taken care of

I was severely disappointed in my Rover experience with Giselle and have never had anything happen like this before with this being my 9th time using Rover and having no issues with previous sitters or my dogs. So I will chalk this up to an anomaly for the most part, but do want to share my personal experience as it relates to others when choosing whether or not to book a certain sitter. I apologize for the length, but the details do matter. For reference, I have two large breed dogs, a Giant Schnauzer and an Airedale Terrier, each intact and both about 1.3 years of age. I booked doggie boarding with Giselle for December 15-18 as my family and I were leaving town. I was quite happy that Giselle offered pick up for an extra fee because we had a very tight time window to get to the airport after my husband got off work and couldn’t risk missing our flight. Giselle came to pick up my dogs with her young daughter around 6:00pm. During the pickup, I exchanged some information about my dogs and also gave her a print out of things that I thought were important to note about their care. She seemed fine and her daughter also seemed to like my dogs as well, so I was really looking forward to having my dogs in good care. She loaded them up into her Sedan and went on her way, leaving us around 6:10pm and she was about 15 minutes away off Briargate. After having loaded out two dogs, her child, and our 20lb bag of dog food, I estimated she was in home about 6:30. Then, literally, at 6:43 pm I got a message from Giselle saying that my dogs were not playing well with the other dogs, that they were peeing on everything, and that she didn’t think it was going to work out, followed by like 4 crying face emojis. So, within the span of about 15 minutes, Giselle canceled on us and left us scrambling to find another dog sitter, while we were already on our way to the airport on a Friday night. How the heck can you expect to find someone to watch dogs after they just left 30 minutes prior on a Friday night during the holidays? That to me was just really unreasonable and not something a dog owner should have to prepare for unless their dog poses a serious danger or threat to human life, which was not the case for my dogs. Now let me give some context. I had used Rover 8 times previously. No sitter has ever given me a bad report. Half of those sitters I have used twice. Most of them also had other animals on their property and there’s never been an issue. My dogs have never been called aggressive, are extremely well-socialized with humans and other dogs, and go to the dog park regularly, where they play with other dogs. If I thought my dogs would have a serious issue with other dogs, I wouldn’t book with sitters who already had dogs or watched more than one dog at a time. But again, I never had an issue, so I wasn’t expecting there to be one, or to have someone calling me within 15 minutes to come get my dogs. So, I had no reason to expect that this visit would go any differently, or that a sitter would have an issue handling anything that came up. Clearly, I was wrong. Giselle claims that she has a lot of experience watching dogs, but based on my experience, it seems clear to me that she has no experience watching intact dogs and dog behavior. For one, she said they were peeing on everything, which is not what they were doing, they were marking. And I warned her about this before she drove off and printed it on the sheet of paper that because I have intact males, if other dogs are around, they may try to mark things. To me that’s just common knowledge about intact breeds but apparently not to everyone. So I was surprised to even get this complaint at all. I just feel as a dog sitter, if you’re going to accept intact males, and you have tons of other dog scents in your home, this shouldn’t be something that surprises you, is out of the ordinary, or gives rise to serious complaints. But that’s simply my opinion, people may feel otherwise. I also say this because Giselle accepted my booking of two intact males with she herself having an unspayed female dog as a pet. No responsible dog sitter would EVER take in not one, but two intact male dogs in their prime AND house them under the same roof with an unspayed female dog WITHOUT a way to separate them AND still provide exceptional care. I asked several people that work with animals, including people from the rescue and my own vet the following week if there was any way that this could be an acceptable scenario to keep three non fixed animals, both male and female, under the same roof of a small apartment and the answer was a big NO. Now, I will accept responsibility for some of this because I’ll admit, when Giselle said she had a dog, I didn’t look on her profile to see what type of dog she had, where it is listed that she has an unspayed female. I didn’t think to look because I just thought no one would be crazy enough to take two male intact dogs and put them with an unspayed female in an apartment and expect them to have no problems whatsoever. And this is why a lot of kennels and dog boarding places won’t take unspayed or intact dogs because those levels of hormones can trigger dogs to act in crazier behaviors than normal. Which is what I estimate happened here, if it is as she described, which leaves me with doubts as it is. I also took issue with the fact that she said they weren’t getting along with the other dog(s), meaning she had at least 4 dogs in her apartment which I think is too many animals in a tight space. Apparently, this was also an issue with another person who left a review as they thought she was watching too many dogs at a time. However, I don’t like to judge too much because there are probably sitters out there who are more experienced that can do this without issue, or maybe they only take small dogs. But a Giant Schnauzer, Airedale Terrier, Goldendoodle (her dog I believe from what I recall), and some other breed, to me, just seems like too much in that space. After Giselle canceled on us we spent the whole night and wee hours of the morning trying to find another dog sitter. I had to put out several posts on Next Door to get help, and thankfully, a wonderful volunteer of Paws and Hooves, who didn’t even know me, was up until 2am making arrangements for my dogs, picked them up from Giselle at 9am in the morning after getting probably only a few hours of sleep, and took them to another Rover sitter, where they received exceptional care and had a great time. Mind you, I still used another Rover sitter, and they too had multiple dogs on their property, but had a way to separate dogs if there was any issue and still provide each and every dog great care and attention. This was not something Giselle was prepared for and did not seem to have a contingency plan if for any reason dogs are not getting along, except for someone to come get their dog. No one should have to worry about that. Mind you, at no point in time did the next Rover sitter call me and tell me my dogs were not getting along with the others. When one of them tried to hump one of her other dogs, she just separated them and let them play in different areas. She just handled it. My dogs had a great time with the other Rover sitter. Since I did not receive any updates at any point from when she canceled to the morning, I can’t say that my dogs had a good experience. With that being said, here are a few things I learned: **Double-check your sitter’s profile **If your sitter is someone who is going to take on multiple dogs, ask them if they can provide care to each dog individually if your dogs don’t get along with other dogs (even if your dogs have never had an issue, you just never know - that was my case) **Always do a meet and greet - I don’t think it would have helped in my case, because my dogs are sweet animals. They are very loving and high-energy, so I don’t have a reason to believe this would have changed anything because the issue was with other dogs, not people. **If you have intact breeds, ask the person about how much experience they have working with them and if they understand what common behaviors are for intact breeds. Giselle described my dogs as aggressive, the next Rover sitter DID NOT, which showed that that sitter had a deeper understanding of dog behavior. It’s already been debunked by a lot of research that humping is not related to aggression, dominance, or sexuality - but is often linked to over-excitement. My dogs were in a new place, with a new person, with two other dogs, with one or maybe even more, not spayed or intact breeds. That just proved to be a recipe for disaster and I have serious concerns about someone who cancels after 15 minutes. To me, that’s just not even enough time for a dog to acclimate, no matter how many times they’ve been boarded. Giselle might be a great sitter for some, as previous reviews indicated, and one of the reasons I selected her even though there was that one issue with her losing a dog. But to me, she is not a good sitter for large intact breeds and since she has an unspayed female, I would not recommend anyone with intact males (or even other unspayed females) to do doggy daycare or boarding with her.