Dog Sitters in Usk

Beverly

I would not recommend this sitter.

I was forced, while still on a 6 month business trip, to end Gina’s sit early.  I had to do this remotely from Southeast Asia with 6 weeks remaining in my trip and am paying out of pocket to replace her.

In the 13+ years I’ve been having petsitters with over 100 sitters (I travel a lot for work), I’ve never had to do anything like this before. Nor have I ever been left with damage to my home’s contents as I have with her.

The issues:
1 - Gina failed to follow my feeding instructions which were easy to follow and put in place to make sure Amelia maintained her weight.

After she stopped following the feeding instructions, Amelia lost 2 pounds - 23% of her body weight -  (from 8.8 to 6.8) getting to a dangerously low weight. Gina didn’t notice this serious weightloss or say anything to me about it. This was discovered by the replacement sitter who was shocked at how skinny Amelia had become.

2 - Gina informed me halfway into the petsit that she was going to have elective, non-emergency surgery during the sit. Initially, she wasn’t even going to tell me.  I only found out because she asked my mom to take her to the hospital and pick her up after the surgery.  When my mom asked her if she had talked to me about it, she said no, she hadn’t thought it was necessary.

I believe that her decision to have elective surgery is in violation of the TH contract since it was not an emergency and would prevent her from fulfilling her petsit duties for at least 3 weeks during her recovery.  It was nothing she had discussed with me as a possibility during our interview or even leading up to her announcement.  I asked her to reconsider and wait to do it when the sit was over - a mere 3 weeks after it was scheduled.  She refused. 

When she announced all this, she gave no assurances that she had thought it through and made any backup plan other than hiring a local sitter to cover her 2 days in the hospital.  

In the interest of not interrupting the sit, I tried to work with her on it.

Gina was very closed to discussions about plans for cat care during her recovery, acting as though I was prying into her personal affairs instead of doing my job as a cat mom and insuring my cats were looked after. 

When I tried to discuss lifting restrictions that conflicted with litterbox changing/cleaning not to mention the possibility of any complications from the surgery, she at first said “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” 

3 - Eventually she told me she had purchased and was planning to switch the cats from their 3 manually cleaned litterboxes to 1  entirely different single self-cleaning litterbox … all without asking me if this major switch was ok. 

When I told her this was not ok for several reasons, her next plan was to ask my neighbors to cover for her … coming to the house several times a week for 3 weeks scooping litterboxes  regularly and changing once a week for at least 3 weeks "because paying a local petsitter to do it was going to be too expensive." 

I asked her not to strain my relationships with my neighbors by doing that and her reply was essentially “you can’t tell me what to do and who I can ask to help me.”

She had already strained relations with one neighbor when she asked him if she could sit on his porch when he wasn’t there, showing a lack of boundaries and judgment. 

4 - She repeatedly showed poor judgment.  

She told me one day that Amelia was bleeding from the ear and a vet would need to determine the cause.  She didn’t call the vet herself, however. Naturally, I was worried.  I asked for a photo and details - how much blood, etc - that the vet would want to know when I called to set up the appointment. She sent a photo of slightly red scratch.  And then said “I guess I overreacted. I don’t think this needs vet attention.”  Things like this happened frequently throughout her sit.

5 - She became increasily combative and antagonistic when I insisted on being on the phone while she got feeding system back in place that she had allowed to lapse.  From that point on, she got openly hostile toward me.

6 - She imposed on my 80 year old mother repeatedly to take her and pick her up from doctor’s appointments on 4 separate occasions rather than being self-reliant and simply paying for an Uber.

7 - Roach and ant problems developed in my house due to her lack of cleaning.  None of these problems existed prior to her arrival.

When the replacement sitter and my mom walked through the house after she left, they reported that she hadn’t cleaned the house in at least quite some time if perhaps the entire 4.5 months of her stay. Cat hair was piled up thick everywhere and there were deep layers of dust throughout the house including in Gina’s bedroom which they documented with photos.

They found 5 piles of cat vomit in the house including on Gina’s nightstand that had clearly been there for a while and not cleaned up.

Gina  tracked down an ant problem to a soda can that leaked in the pantry. But she didn’t want to clean up the dead ants or wipe up the leaked soda saying “I’m going to leave this for you to clean up”.  Bear in mind that I’m away on a 6 month business trip with 6 weeks still to go before I return home.  With the soda not being cleaned up, naturally the ants kept returning.

8 - She damaged several items in my home.

She somehow got a 4” diameter bleach stain in the middle of the solid red comforter on her bed.  Additionally, she failed to say anything about it. It will need to be replaced.

She ripped sheets badly and blamed it on the cats. In 20+ years of cat ownership, I’ve never had my cats even scratch my sheets, much less completely tear them through. This tear looked like someone had repeated dragged something heavy and metal over it like a suitcase.  They will need to be replaced.

The mattress pad/cover on the bed she was using, which was pristine when she arrived, has many large dark brown stains all over it  - particularly bad in a 2 foot square area -  that have not come out when washed and will need to be replaced.

CONCLUSION:

All of these examples and more not listed took an extreme amount of time away from my work on my business trip and caused untold amounts of stress.

For a very short term sit, Gina might be fine.  She was really good for the first while with this one.  In some cases, she even went above and beyond - taking Marley out on a leash in the backyard so he could enjoy the outdoors, for example, and trying to grow grass for him indoors.

I acknowledged and thanked her for all those things repeatedly.

Then something shifted and she couldn’t manage basic things in the house by herself.

After the shift, it was a case of one episode of poor judgment and lack of capacity after another - basic things she should have managed on her own (like the ants mentioned above) but were laid at my feet to resolve and worry about from half a world away.

Then we got to where she insisted on having this non-emergency surgery during the sit, refused to work with me to come up with a plan for cat care coverage, insisted she would call in my neighbors to cover her duties even though I told her that was inappropriate and asked her not to (she did finally concede on that but it took a drawn out heated discussion to get to that point when it should’t have been an option to begin with).

Between that, her insistence on having this surgery 3 weeks before the petsit was to end instead of waiting that short amount of time, her open hostility toward me around arranging cat care during her surgical recovery, her failure to follow feeding instructions leading to a dangerous weight loss for my cat, on top of the multiple instances of poor judgment and lack of capacity to handle even the most basic of house management tasks, I was forced to end the sit early.

Kelly

Heather was fabulous - very communicative and attentive. We had an issue with a runaway chicken that she handled really well. Our pets seemed really happy when we came home - and she managed pictures of of our cats in just a day, which is almost impossible! We would have her back anytime.

Lauren

Suzanne was great, I'd happily let her stay again!

Jo

We had a wonderful sit in Cobham. Jo and Keith’s house is very comfortable, clean and has all mod cons you could need. They were kind to leave us a welcome gift and were quick to respond to & resolve any questions or issues. 

The highlight of our stay was the sweet animals - you can tell they have a loving home as all 3 are very affectionate, gentle and love cuddles. Douglas is cute and a little cheeky, Disney is full of life and wants nothing more than to be close by your side and Annabelle is beautiful and friendly, she’s our idea of the perfect cat. 

We would highly recommend and would love to sit again.