We hired Julia for the week of Thanksgiving after our established pet sitter had to cancel last minute due to a family emergency. Julia came to our home for a meet and greet where she met our cat and dog and was provided with detailed house sitting instructions. Our dog is very low-maintenance and requires minimal amounts of exercise a day (30 minutes) and usually has a flexible schedule, but was on an antibiotic at the time of this stay and, therefore, needed her meals to be about 12 hours apart. Our cat is self-sufficient (automatic feeder, big water bowl, litter box, etc.) and doesn’t require any care, but we were happy to pay Julia’s cat fee. Before leaving, I had provided Julia with a “Pet Sitting Instructions” sheet to reference during her stay with the hope it would help our trip go smoothly and be as stress free as possible. After arriving to begin the stay, Julia went 38 hours without giving us an update. We have a Ring camera on our front door, which is completely visible, that I checked to make sure she was actually at our home. That was when I discovered Julia had only been taking our dog out on two four minute potty breaks a day, despite the “Pet Sitting Instructions” differentiating between walks and potty breaks. After seeing this continue, I messaged Julia to confirm she understood the expectation. Julia was dishonest about how often and how long she was taking our dog outside of our apartment for walks and potty breaks. Another 24 hours then went by without hearing from Julia and we reached out again for another update. After this, Julia became very defensive and combative and conversations with her become unnecessarily difficult, which took away from time with our families. On Thanksgiving, she asked to feed our dog her dinner and give her her antibiotic later than usual. I agreed, but said 10pm was the absolute latest. At 10:30pm, Julia still hadn’t returned to feed our dog her dinner and give her her antibiotic. Just before 11pm, she messaged that she had “lost track of time”. On our last day, we received a complaint from our property manager regarding damage that was being done to our unit while we were away. When we returned, we discovered, in addition to this, that our personal belongings had also been disrespected. This, according to Julia, was our fault. Since returning home, we have attempted to find resolution with Julia regarding how she treated our pets and our home. Julia has remained incapable of holding herself accountable and has made many attempts to blame us for the reasons we are displeased with her service. Julia expressed her frustration that she didn’t know ahead of time we were “collecting proof”, despite being aware there was a Ring camera on our front door. Regardless, a person with integrity will do the right thing whether they’re knowingly being observed or not and there is a difference between misunderstanding and dishonesty. Rover is now working to rectify this situation. I do not recommend Julia for pet sitting services, but she might be fine completing a short dog walk.

I cannot recommend Julia enough! She sent photos and frequently communicated with us that Vanessa was doing well. We can tell that Vanessa loved spending time with her as well. I will definitely reach out to Julia again in the future.