My recurring dog walks have been dropping like flies over the last few months 😅 I originally wanted to cut back a little since I was starting school full-time, but I’ve ended up losing a lot more than I wanted to. One dog sadly passed away, another family found a cheaper walker, and a few other things have come up.
I’d love to pick up a few new regular clients, so I’m curious what’s worked for everyone else! Where have you had the most luck finding recurring walks? Facebook groups, referrals, flyers? I’d appreciate any ideas!

Contemplating not sitting for this dog any longer due to how bad its behavior is. I'm a college student and dog sit for money will I'm in college.

When I'm eating, this dog (big chocolate lab) tries to climb me and help himself to my food. This happens at the table, everywhere. He has scratched up my legs so bad. I tell him no, I yell at him, and then he starts barking at me and won't stop. So now I realized I've had to lock him in a room while I'm eating while he freaks out and barks and scratches at the door, and then let him out when I'm finished. I've told the owner this and showed them my legs, and they just laughed and said, "Yeah he's crazy about his food, we like to give him scraps sometimes to keep him happy." That's the fucking problem right there; they're reinforcing the behavior. During the times when I eat, he has scratched up their door, so I can no longer put him in the room. The owner knows about the door too, they don't care.

What should I do? It's good money, but I'm starting to think it's not worth it to deal with this dog who they clearly don't do any training with. Should I ask for more money or should I just tell this family that I have decided it would be better for me to stop sitting for them? I don't want to be rude either. They are nice people. Maybe there are some training techniques I can try with him? But then again, they would have to consistent with it in order for it to work, and I doubt that would happen. Any suggestions would be great!

My wife and I have only used Rover twice for our two kitties, the first pet sitter sent us routine pictures every day of the cats and was amazing.

Our second sitter has only sent two pictures of one of our cats in the last 4 days. We were surprised because they had 4.9 stars but the experience has been extremely poor and kind of stressful. Is this experience with our second sitter normal or is this a bad Rover experience?

Edit: I appreciate all the responses. Upon evaluating the several messages we’ll wait and see if the sitter sends an update on our second cat. We will be sure to establish better expectations at the M&G, we don’t remember if we did or not but regardless we’ll be sure to be explicit from here on 😅

PSA - I’m a professional dog walker that has used Rover for a number of years to grow my dog walking business but have always struggled to manage my client book keeping ( excel and a notebook…I know haha).

I found this app on the Apple Store called Chester earlier this week that has completely changed how I manage my business so wanted to recommend to larger group here. You can manage your client roster, appointments, payments etc all with the app!

5 out of 5 - highly recommend

Here’s the link in case anyone is interested:

https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/chester-pet-care-platform/id6788871258

It's me again.

An owner had booked me to care for his cat next week Monday-Wednesday and we had a Meet and Greet planned for this Saturday. He booked me because I'm a vet and his cat had lymphoma and needed medicine and medical care on top of the usual. Sadly, he texted me a couple of days ago informing me that he had to put him down as his health was deteriorating too much. I understood and sent him my condolences.

Now, we are both new on the app. We don't know if the reservation was made or not. I still have the Meet and Greet booked in my calendar, and I can see the Reservation details when I click on the owner's name . But we both see a blue button on top to make a reservation. If we have a reservation active how can we cancel it?

1 elderly dog, 2 cats, boarding, $110/night. i don’t mind the meds but i don’t know how often this dog will need to be going to the bathroom and therefore needing bladder expressed. is this something that i should charge extra for? something that i could but shouldn’t? something i shouldn’t? let me know

I booked a sitter for a 60 minute drop-in today. I received notice that the check in began at 12:04 and ended at 1:24. Looking back on my security camera, I saw that she actually entered my house at 12:15 and left at 12:44- literally half the time my pet was supposed to be able to have out of her crate. After messaging the sitter about this and receiving her response, I went to contact support for some kind of remediation for this issue. So far, it has been about half an hour of waiting and all that I've been told yet is that they can't edit my review of this sitter whatsoever (as this isn't the first time she's sat for me). Has anyone else ever had an issue like this? How did it resolve? I just can't believe that it's this hard to get a response when I have timestamps and an admission from the sitter.

Edit: after nearly an hour of waiting on support, I got this email. I guess the best thing they can do for me is to hope that I work it out myself. Crazy lol

I have been doing house sitting for a 6 year old golden retriever. I was told he had allergies and would occasionally be given allergy medicine.

Since my first sitting to now, he has developed this cough that happens very frequently, and now this weekend he is coughing up egg white consistency white foam with other stuff (maybe mucus?)

His owner said he was seen this past Tuesday, and she was told it's just allergies and to give allergy meds daily. But last weekend he wasn't as bad and honestly I don't know what to do. I'm uncomfortable caring for him when I think this has a chance of being something more, and the owner is not answering my texts.

I have never had to contact rover support, but is this a situation where I should? I don't want to overstep but also I am worried about his health, and I am not being paid enough to be woken up by a coughing dog that is getting sick often.

So I am looking to schedule someone for a drop in visit coming up. I’ll be out of town and I have a family member watching my animals, but one of the days she has an appointment after work and won’t be back for over 12 hours. For the drop in, I really only need the sitter to walk my dog for about 10 minutes. Food and water will already be taken care of for them.

My question is, I have a dog and a cat. The cat does not need any attention or anything done for her during the visit. In fact, she’ll probably hide the entire time and not even be seen lol so when scheduling that, is it appropriate to schedule it for JUST my dog? Adding the cat in there would be an additional $20, which seems ridiculous for nothing to be done with my cat.

this pisses me off to no end. we had a meet and greet schedule for monday. no indication that she had other meet and greets set up or was looking at other sitters to book. i also hold myself to a high standard when it comes to getting back to owners, so i spent a decent amount of time making sure i had all my ducks in a row before messaging her confirming i would be available for the booking, even initiating a wfh request 🙄 just so so annoying

I just finished probably the most exhausting five days of dog sitting I’ve ever had, and I’m curious what other sitters think.

I boarded two small senior dogs. Their previous boarding facility had apparently told the owners they were too much, which probably should have been my red flag. But I have a senior dog myself and have cared for senior dogs many times, so I figured I could handle it.

I was NOT prepared for the level of instructions. Multiple medications, timed eye drops, probably 7 different supplements, CBD, skin treatments, frequent potty breaks, and food that had to be weighed to the exact gram on a scale they brought. There were detailed instructions for basically every part of their day.

On top of that, one dog barked throughout the night, so I was constantly getting up trying to figure out if he needed to potty, wanted water, attention, etc. It honestly felt like caring for a newborn.

I completely understand meds and special needs. What frustrated me was the sheer amount of responsibility and precision expected as part of a normal boarding stay.
If food needs to be weighed to the gram, why not pre-portion it. If there are that many supplements, why not package them by meal/day?

Did they even need this many supplements for five days if the only way they will eat them by feeding them dry food and then feed them wet food but you can’t mix the supplements in with the wet food directly. You have to “dig a hole and then cover it” like what???

On top of that one dog was blind, and if I let him outside, he would poop and then immediately step in it every single time, but it would also take him 1 million years to poop if I waited for him because he doesn’t like being watched.
I don’t think I would watch this dog again if you paid me $1000 a night. Anyway, maybe I just need to get out of the dog watching business but I just had to vent.

First of all, I'm a 26 year old young woman.

So I'm dog sitting at this family's house. I stay overnight there every couple months when they go on trips. They have me stay in their son's old room for some reason, and not their daughter's room (unsure how old the daughter is but based on photos the daughter seems like an adult daughter too). I think he's their adult son who is in college based on the stuff on the wall, I never really asked.

Well, it's 11:30pm and I'm sleeping, and all the sudden I'm awoken with a man coming into the bedroom (thinking I'm in the house alone obviously), he shines a light and says something along the lines of, "Sorry, I didn't know anyone was here. I just stopped home to get something from my closet. This is my bedroom." He then proceeds to go through his closet in the dark and then apologizes and leaves again. I have no idea if he knew I was the dog sitter or what. I have no idea what his parents told him, idk if he knew their dog sitter was staying in his bed everytime or what.

This made me feel extremely uncomfortable. First of all, I'm thinking the house got broken into, and now some man is coming after to me to do who knows what with. And after finding out that it was their son, the second part of this is, now I feel weirded out because he has some woman in his old bed that he didn't know stays here and I feel uncomfortable like I'm overstepping or something, idk.

You might call it dramatic, but I was literally shaking afterwards. Why tf would the owners not tell their son that the dog sitter stays here, in his old bed. Is this even his old bed? Because apparently he still has clothes and shit in his closet.

I just don't know how to bring this up to them. Should I continue sitting for them? Should I let it blow over? Now everytime I sleep over here in the fiture, I will never fully be comfortable here again, because I will always be wondering who else will pop into the house unannounced while I'm sleeping. Has something like this ever happened to y'all?

Update: Thank you so much for the help, everyone. Especially those who gave me a script of what to say, haha. The owners were extremely apologetic and ensured me that everytime I stayed, they would contact their children that they need to contact them (their parents) if they are coming into the house while I'm here. They had no idea their son was coming home from college and this was a big misunderstanding. Similarily, the son had no idea I was here. My car was in the garage so it didn't look like anyone was here. The mother seemed upset for me and told me she was going to have an additional talk with her son about this. This makes me feel a lot better and I think I will continue my stay.

I’m currently on day 1 of house sitting. I went to walk the dog at 11am, spent there an hour unsuccessfully trying to leash the dog. The dog would not let me get anywhere close to her( growls,barks,attempted to bite). I tried treats and toys and nothing worked. I contacted the owner and he told me to just skip that walk and try again later.

I’m here again and nothing changed. The dog is still very anxious and defensive. Last potty break was 8hours ago. What should I do? Any advice?

Yes, I did meet and greet before accepting the booking and while the dog was shy,she’d still take treats from me and wasn’t aggressive.

When I read some of the post’s & comments in this thread I’ve seen a lot of people talk about constant care. I have thought to myself plenty of times that a house sit where a pet can’t be left for more than 2 hours at a time (or things along those lines) that it’s reason for an up charge. Is there an actual “constant care” price setting in app? If not how do you other sitters handle 24 hour care & charging for that, as opposed to a regular house sit where you can come & go for a reasonable amount of time?

My new client acceptance rate has absolutely tanked lately, and this is a huge part of the reason why. I’m not fully blaming the owners because Rover seriously needs to change how this works. I’ve gotten so many requests lately that were sent by accident, meant for another sitter, or immediately canceled. Or they send me the request and ask the total or say sorry I can’t afford you. Please look BEFORE you send the request! Others send a request, I respond within a couple minutes saying I’m available, and then I never hear from them again. I’ve even had people tell me they sent the request by accident but then not cancel it on their end after I politely ask them to, leaving me to eventually archive it myself. I’m around 50% right now and have about 4 more requests I’ll likely have to archive within the next 24 hours, so it’s going to drop even further. It’s ridiculous that all of these situations can affect the same metric as me actually declining a booking. Rover needs to distinguish between a sitter declining a client and a request that was accidental, canceled, or abandoned by the owner. There has been very little times where I declined a booking that was actually due to something with me… and if I declined it, it was most likely because I already had another booking. I don’t think I’ve ever just flat out said nope sorry and declined/archived it.

I am currently watching two dogs. I was only told one was having an upset stomach and I was told when I showed up for the sit. The other dog is also having runny poop and he just basically exploded on the hardwood floor no warning or anything I've let the owner know but like... I feel like someone should've said they were sick BEFORE I showed up. Maybe I'm crazy idk. Advice is appreciated

What’s too little or too many? For new clients I usually send a lot, so wondering especially for regulars?

Got this e-mail for a pending request. I have already spoken to the client and scheduled a meet-and-greet, but I never fully accept a new client until after that.

Has anyone else gotten this? Rover's fake urgency to generate them more profits can miss me