Be forewarned that this sitter is dangerous. I left my elderly pup with Yuliya for 10 days as a boarder at her home. When my pup came back, she had nearly lost the will to live, and I mean that literally. She could no longer jump up into a car, she had to be picked up and placed into it. She no longer interacted with people or her surroundings- she just stared off into space. She could barely walk – her left hind leg had been badly injured. When she first saw me, she was at home laying down in her bed, and she neither raised her head to look at me nor moved her body- and I have left her with sitters plenty of times before. My dad was counseling me about preparing myself to say goodbye. There was blood in her stool. Miraculously within a day or two of me arriving, she sprang back to life and is thankfully 90% better. Still, hind leg is permanently damaged and she can no longer fully walk and her vitality is compromised from the stress, for example, her bark is no longer as loud as it used to be. We still have not figured out what is wrong with regards to her bloody stool, but some foreign objects have emerged that I do not recognize from my own home or surroundings. I think there are several problems with this sitter. One is that she is purely in this for the money. She has an extremely busy schedule and is often not in the apartment, leaving the animal alone. My dog is okay being alone, but my impression is she was left alone beyond excessively. The part of the home where my dog was allowed is small, not cozy at all, dark, and quite depressing. The two long flights of stairs up to her home are very steep, which for my pup were challenging- this is not Yuliya’s fault per se, but she should definitely add this to her profile so owners of elderly dogs are forewarned, I felt ambushed by this. I also think she doles out affection towards animals very sparsely- in part because she is very busy and doesn’t have much time and in part because she doesn’t really seem to be much of an animal person even though her profile would suggest otherwise. To her credit, I do want to thank her for picking up some medicine from my building one block away from her home that arrived late in the mail for my dog. She also picked up some blueberries as a treat for my dog, with money I gave her. I was hopeful that this relationship would work out but unfortunately the results were absolutely terrible.

Yuliya has been an excellent dog sitter for Delilah, communication has been excellent, receiving photos during our vacation days is key and we have received quite a few from Yuliya. The calm with which Delilah received us after a week apart says a lot about how much fun Delilah had with Yuliya. We fully recommend her :)