The Smiling Dog Pet Sitters & Dog Walkers

When I first moved to Austin in December 2007 I interviewed several pet sitters/​walkers and didn’t like ANY of them until someone told me about The Smiling Dog. The first time I met Sara I knew we’d get along just fine. I felt comfortable having her in my home and knew she would take great care of my pets. Over the years I can’t tell you how many times Sara has come to my rescue when I’ve had to travel unexpectedly. My pets are always relaxed and happy when I come home. Any time I have been home and Sara has come to take them out they are always super excited to see her!

I hired Sara in a frenzy to help with an out of control foster dog and my other 2 dogs. I was stressed and felt completely unable to deal with the situation at hand while working long exhausting days. She always left notes letting me know how the dogs did on their walk and how much my oldest enjoyed his cuddle time.
Sara was amazing with all of my pups including the unruly foster. She was always calm and brought a sense of peace into the house. I especially appreciated her flexibility when I contacted her last minute to add me onto the schedule or change my regular visit times. She never complained and always assured me that she could take care of things.
Sara was always professional, respectful, accommodating and amazing with my pups. She was a significant help during a very stressful time. I always recommend her to friends (and strangers when I over hear them taking about long work hours and feeling like a bad doggie parent) and will continue to do so!

Sara is very sweet and loves our dog a lot. Cost effective and dependable, I recommend using her services and letting her take care of your furry children.

My dogs heart the Smiling Dog and are certainly smiling after their «dates» with Sara!
Sara is the first, and only, non-​family member I have ever entrusted with my dogs. She’s equally amazing with my difficult little evil genius as she is with my happy go lucky clown and didn’t mind one bit that we had to do a multistep and somewhat complex introduction process for our evil beast to trust her. She also takes it in stride when we have a surprise extra foster pup around or have special requests like medicating our dogs or taking them for special outings to the park etc. We’ve sung her praises so much that several other families in our neighborhood now use Sara too and all of us cannot say enough how much we adore Sara and how pleased we are to have found her service! Definitely recommend and will continue to hire Sara.

We have been using Sara for about 2 years now to keep our babies while we travel to areas where they are not so pet friendly or for whatever reason they cant join us. She is always so sweet and personable. She will sometimes take our little guy out on coffee dates with her and even sends us pics of them all having a great time while we are away. Our dogs love her. She has a rapid response time when we text inquiring about our babies and always makes us feel like our dogs are in great hands. Makes traveling easy and allows us to focus on our travel at hand. keeps worrying to a minimum. We wont use anyone else… Thanks Sara!!! Woof Woof

If you’re looking for a reputable dog walker, steer clear of The Smiling Dog! During my first meeting with Sara, she seemed to bond immediately with our puppy and assured us how devoted she would be. We discussed expectations and I thought everything would go smoothly.
The first red flag was her lack of communication. Seeing as we have a puppy, we wanted to know how each visit went, specifically whether he peed/​pooped. Once we gently reminded her, she began leaving notes that would occasionally be helpful, but mostly just noted how the weather was, how cute he was, how fast he’s growing etc. Not exactly what we were interested in.
The first MAJOR problem was when we had a friend at the house who let us know Sara arrived nearly an hour late, and only had him out for 25 minutes when we were paying her for an HOUR. Given the fact we have a puppy, timing is very important to us since he can’t hold it for that long. She never notified us of a delay or the short visit, and wouldn’t have refunded us if our friend hadn’t been home to report the problem. Even worse, I texted her at 3:15p to ensure everything was going smoothly, to which she replied yes. Only to find out later she hadn’t even arrived until 3:50p. NOT OK.
After discussing these issues and spelling out what is ok, and what is not ok (blows my mind we even needed to do this) we gave her the benefit of the doubt and continued to work with her since she seemed eager to make things right.
Less than a week later, my boyfriend was home sleeping, unbeknownst to Sara. She had left the note about how the walk went PRIOR to even taking him outside, and not locked the door on her way out. He then witnessed her take our puppy into the sandwich shop below our building for 15 minutes and then bring him back to the apartment. This is horrible treatment for any dog, but especially a puppy we are trying to potty train! If she does not walk him outside, she’s just reinforcing that he go to the bathroom inside. So terrible!
When we confronted her, she said «my schedule is dictated by customer requests and schedule changes.» She went onto explain that when she has cancellations, she can walk him for longer, but if she gets additional last minute bookings, his walks get cut short. WHAT?! In what world do last minute requests trump prior bookings? THAT IS NOT WHAT WE AGREED ON BY ANY MEANS. Our puppy should be getting DAILY walks from 3−4p. If her schedule is slow and she can have him out longer, great. However, that does not mean that she can cut into our reserved time to make some more cash. ABSOLUTELY NOT.
I will NEVER work with The Smiling Dog again or recommend them to any dog owners.

We’ve used The Smiling Dog to pet sit for our dogs every time we’ve gone out of town for the last few years. Always awesome, the dogs love ‘em, and they’re super dependable. Sara is great to deal with, has a lot of fun with the pets, and is professional when being professional counts. She’s also friendly.
I recommend The Smiling Dog to everyone I know who owns a pet and needs dependable, excellent care for their animals.