Dog Owner Leaves Her Anxious Rescue Dog With A Pet Sitter For The First Time In 10 Years — It Did Not Go Well
Her dog deserved better.
Bluebird / Shutterstock Dogs are more than just our pets; they’re beloved members of our family.
Part of being a good pet parent includes making sure your pups are well cared for, even if you can't be there.
A dog owner left her anxious rescue with a pet sitter for the first time in a decade, and it didn’t go well.
Ellen Tift shared her story of a pet-sitting situation gone wrong. She said that she hadn’t left her dog on his own in 10 years, as she usually takes him along on road trips.
“He’s got anxiety, he’s a rescue, he’s got trauma, he’s got separation anxiety,” she said. “So I felt like the least stressful thing would be to hire someone to stay in my house.”
She went through a dog-sitting website, thinking that the people listed “are vetted, they have ratings, they have an umbrella of authority over them.”
Tift described the pet sitter she hired as “super sweet. She was all promises,” saying, “I’m gonna love on your dog, and it’s gonna be great, and he’s so sweet.”
The pet sitter said that she’d lost her job, which meant she could spend more time with the dog.
The fact is, there are an estimated 35,000 pet sitters in the U.S. making up a $1 Billion industry. With all that potential capital and no stringent legislation, pet care can run the gamut from excellent to dangerous. Even doing due diligence does not guarantee the person you hire will actually perform the services to your standards, as Tift quickly learned.
Tift tried to make the pet sitter feel comfortable, setting up the guest room and offering to let her use her art supplies, but her kindness wasn’t repaid in any form.
“I just had a feeling tonight,” she said. “I checked my security camera on my porch to see when her car was in my driveway and I realized that she didn’t even stay at my house last night.”
Ivan Babydov / Pexels
“We’re paying for her to sleep in our house with our dog,” Tift exclaimed. “I saw her showing up at my porch at 7:30 in the morning.”
When she checked the previous days’ times on the camera, Tift noticed that she left at 7:30 in the morning and then came back at 2:30 in the afternoon to take him on a walk. Tift did the math to discover that the walk was only 6 minutes long, and then, the pet sitter left for the remainder of the day.
“Her car was not in the driveway overnight,” Tift said, reporting that the pet sitter came back to her house at 7:30 in the morning, stayed for 10 minutes, then left.
Later, Tift clocked her time: “Eight minutes from the time she pulled into my driveway, let the dog out, and then was pulling back out of my driveway.”
It became clear that the pet sitter wasn’t staying at the house or providing adequate care for the dog.
Tift tried an accountability experiment: she texted the pet sitter to ask if the dog was sleeping next to her at night to see how she’d respond.
The pet sitter said he slept with her sometimes, answering in a way that made it seem like she was staying over, which is what was required of her in the first place.
The next night, Tift called the pet sitter’s bluff, telling her that she knew she’d only spent eight minutes at the house and saw that her car wasn’t in the driveway.
“Help me understand what’s going on here,” she said to the pet sitter. “We agreed that you would stay overnight, and my dog needs people to be around him; he has social anxiety.”
The pet sitter had a list of excuses ready, telling Tift, “I’m at my Bible study right now. I fell asleep on the couch at my apartment last night, and I should have communicated with you better.”
Meruyert Gonullu / Pexels
“It was like she felt like she hadn’t communicated, not about leaving my dog alone,” Tift explained, pointing out the glaring issue with the pet sitter, which was that she didn’t seem to care for the dog’s well-being at all.
Even though she was caught in her web of lies, the pet sitter continued to spend only ten minutes at a time with the dog.
Tift sent her a text saying, “This is not okay; you’re not living up to what we agreed,” and asked when she planned to get to the house. The pet sitter said she wasn’t sure because her Bible study was running late.
“She’s making all these promises, like, ‘Oh, you’re right, I’m so sorry, this is so out of character for me,’ and I’m like, okay, that’s textbook for, ‘This is totally my character.’”
Tift said that the pet sitter was “apologizing, saying, ‘I should have communicated better.’ No, you shouldn’t have abandoned my dog.”
“The more I thought about it, the more I thought, ‘I don’t trust her,’” she said.
Tift confirmed how untrustworthy the pet sitter was, explaining that she sent photos “at a certain time, acting as if she was coming and going, and then I downloaded the photos, and I looked at the timestamps and it didn’t line up with when she was sending them to me.”
“She’s laying all this lip service on me, like, ‘Oh, I promise, how can I regain your trust,’” Tift said, noting how fake it all seemed.
“In my 30s, I would have been like, ‘Okay, let’s just try to make it better.’ I’m in my 50s now. I have learned to believe behavior,” she said.
She got down to the crux of the issue, criticizing “Anyone who can leave my dog alone that much when I am paying them to sleep in my house and love on my dog, and then lie and pretend as if they’re doing it.”
Tift shared that she spoke with the dog-sitting service, who said they would find a replacement sitter.
“This is my dog. He’s a rescue, and he has separation anxiety and trauma. I love my dog,” she said, emphasizing how strong the bond between a pet parent and pet can be.
Dogs deserve consistent care, and pet owners deserve not to be lied to by people they hire to help them. Ultimately, Tift's negative pet-sitting experience served as a lesson in holding people accountable for how their words align with their actions.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture, and all things to do with the entertainment industry.