Unfortunately, we had a bad experience with Michelle and had to call a friend to pick up our dog less than half way through the booked stay. We booked her for boarding at her house for 6 nights. Our dog is a 1yr old golden retriever. Long story short, Michelle was not very communicative and was unable to manage our dog and keep a safe environment. Our first complaint is that she was not very communicative. We typically love getting updates while we are gone, and asked to get just one pic/update per day. At first she reluctantly said she would send an update a day, but she did not follow through on that. The main issue occurred when she left our dog alone for several hours while she went to work. Our dog got into and chewed up some of her stuff. This behavior is atypical for our dog, but she was probably stressed at being left in a new environment with other dogs. Michelle sent us this update and asked if we had recommendations on what she could do. We had already had a conversation about keeping doors closed but said we usually exercise our dog before leaving her and to put anything away/block access to things that she didn’t want to get chewed on. A few hours later we got another update that our dog had chewed up some more things while she was left again. Michelle then said that she “didn’t know what to do at that point.” We understand Michelle being frustrated, as were we. I do not think that a sitter should board dogs at her home if they are unprepared to handle the possibility that the dog will chew things that are left out when left alone. We also asked directly if our dog was ok and if she had gotten into anything dangerous, but Michelle never directly responded about whether our dog was ok. Instead she was focused on what had been chewed on. In our communications, it was clear that Michelle did not know how to handle this situation. It was only after we explicitly asked if our dog was ok that Michelle said that our dog had gotten into a personal electronic device with a battery—we asked if our dog may have eaten something with a battery in it and she didn’t give a straight answer. Michelle also told us that she had plans for the weekend that involved leaving our dog for an extended period of time and was concerned given that she had gotten into her stuff already. Ultimately, we decided that the environment was not safe for our dog, we were worried that she had already ingested something dangerous and that she might have access to something else if she stayed there. We thought that our dog was stressed out at being left in a new place for so long. And, it seemed like Michelle was overwhelmed and not prepared to be boarding our dog—who is typically fairly well behaved. So we felt like we had no choice but to find some alternative. To figure the situation out, we had to spend one day of our vacation dealing with this. We ended up calling a friend and asking for the last minute favor of taking our dog in for the rest of our trip. Thankfully our friend came through and we were able to get our dog to somewhere else where she was happy and safe. Finally, Michelle continued to give poor communication as we were arrangingu to have our friend come pick up our dog. In total, our dog spent less than half of the booked time with this sitter. Overall, it was a negative experience and we cannot in good faith recommend that other rover users leave their pets here while they are gone.

Wish we got more photos and updates while we were away!