Rover.com – Dog Boarding & Sitting

From a sitter’s perspective:
As someone who has worked as a pet sitter for several years, I appreciate this great new way to market & get clients I may not have otherwise received. The set up is really simple, you make your profile, you post it & then wait. I’ve had an extensive past working with animals, so I had my first booking within hours of posting. I always do meet & greets before taking on new clients, and the website encourages it, as they should. They make it really easy to connect with dog lovers, pet sitters, etc. and to communicate with them. It’s a great concept, though I do have a few qualms: [1] they take 15% out of your pay. Which, I get it, you provide insurance, marketing (sort of) and connect the clients to the person providing a service. But, by far, this is the highest take out that I’ve experienced with a service like this. I’m privately insured & bonded for all furry guests, so I do think the insurance should be optional, since I imagine any person with real dog sitting experience would have those outside of Rover. [2] They don’t really do much of a background check. While some people do have the little check mark that says they have a background check done, it’s not extensive and I think it should include some sort of previous animal history, and not just let some «Joe Schmo» pet sit someone’s beloved fur baby. [3] The app is great, but not the best. I think you should be able to access the items from the dashboard on your app/​phone, but you aren’t able to.
From a client’s perspective:
I used
for the first time when I traveled to Boston a few weeks back. Our sitter was great, and it was easy to navigate. I appreciated that I was able to book someone in another state and feel good about leaving my fur baby with someone that was skilled enough to care for him.

We used
for dog boarding for the first time. We felt very relieved and comfortable to find a great dog sitter.
helps with the leg work of finding a pet sitter. Our sitter sent us updates and photo’s of our dogs at her house. It made us feel a lot better about leaving our animals. I highly recommend this service.

I love using rover. It is so easy and my dog doesn’t want to leave my house so my sitter comes over. I really hated using a kennel!

Dog boarding with
was the best experience for our pup. We found the very best sitter to take care of our dog while we were out of town for the week. She took such good care of our boy and we would use
again.

Rover is great! We have used
in both Milwaukee and Tucson, AZ for pet sitting and dog boarding, and our sitters have been top notch! It’s a cross between AirBnB – locals who want to help by pet sitting – and Unilocal – everyone is reviewed by their peers. We’ve had terrific luck with our sitters. Sitters send emails and you can get your messages on your phone as txts too. Each stay our sitters have sent lots of pictures, which has given us a lot of peace of mind. We’ll certainly use them again (esp as the quality and price is totally right for our loved ones). Thanks Rover!