I love dog boarding, but I left Rover anyway
Rover is to Uber what Wag is to Lyft
Dogs welcome. People tolerated. It’s a sign that’s prominent when walking through my front door, and I mean it. I could hang out with people’s dogs all day long and enjoy a people-free day. It’s one of the reasons social isolation doesn’t bother me nearly as much as most (give or take a few). But my full-time career is already freelance and a work-from-home position, so staying at home to work was something I was doing before I even knew who Chinese ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was.
How COVID-19 affects dog walking jobs
Dog boarding, dog sitting and dog walking seemed like natural side jobs to have as social isolation became the norm. However, it also dwindled down considerably from me walking three to four dogs per day to three to four dogs per month. I missed these 80 faces at first, and then I just got used to not seeing them — give or take a handful that I still miss no matter what.
But if you’re a dog walker, you quickly realize that dog owners, who were usually not home when you came to walk their dogs, were now at home. Some were masked, some were not. And after an owner came rushing up to me, trying to touch both me and her dog and constantly handing me things within a 6-foot distance, I had to give up a couple of my favorites.
Recommended Read: “The health questions dog walkers don’t want to ask ~ For health reasons, dog owners should ask. For the sake of our sanity, we don’t.”
Dogs welcome. People tolerated. But I love me more than all of y’all. So dog walkers were put in an awkward situation where they either dealt with dog owners who acted like coronavirus was a figment of our imagination, or we started significantly curtailing which dogs we continued walking. While this was a non-issue with dog owners who were still usually not home and it was all about the dog (and me slapping on the antibacterial ointment and a mask before and after entry), pet owners who had the “It’s my home and I don’t feel like wearing a mask even with strangers entering” attitude are ruining it for everybody.
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As an Amazon affiliate, I earn a percentage from purchases with my referral links. I know some consumers are choosing to boycott Amazon for its DEI removal. However, after thinking about this thoroughly, I choose to continue promoting intriguing products from small businesses, women-owned businesses and (specifically) Black-owned businesses who still feature their items on Amazon. All five of my Substack publications now include a MINIMUM of one product sold by a Black-owned business. (I have visited the seller’s official site, not just the Amazon Black-owned logo, to verify this.) If you still choose to boycott, I 100% respect that decision.
But their home, their business. What started to become particularly peculiar for me were the amount of Rover requests I received for pet owners asking me to stay in their homes. It’s exhausting enough to just touch a door knob, get the leash and get the dog(s) out of the door. The last thing I want to do is sleep in anybody’s guest bed or touch anyone’s household appliances — or pretty much anything else — if I don’t have to. I shut down the dog sitting option in March 2020, a year ago. And even though that option was nowhere on my Rover profile, the requests kept coming.
But that’s not why I shut down my account.
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As an Amazon affiliate, I earn a percentage for every purchase with my referral link.
What the Wag app has that the Rover app does not: A block feature
During my short time as an Uber and Lyft driver after quitting a particularly horrendous job, one of the issues that bothered me most about the ride-sharing app was the lack of control that drivers had for who could and could not be repeat customers. Lyft re-assessed this first, making it so that any passenger who got three stars or less could be blocked. With Uber, the rating was one star or less. However, Lyft gave drivers several hours to respond to passenger reviews, so you could actually give a specific explanation.
Uber’s rating system was instant. Even if you had other passengers in the car, you had to rate that passenger who just got out of the car immediately. And there is no moment as awkward as giving a passenger a one-star rating while you still have one or two other people in the car. I left Uber right after I hit 50 rides and never had any desire to go back.
Rover gives me the same indifferent tone as Uber does. Both companies are more invested in the passengers (or dog owners) than the drivers (or dog caregivers). If you have a poor experience with a dog owner, there is no way to hide the review (although out of 13, I had 12 positive reviews plus repeats) nor block the pet owner from contacting you again. Rover’s Customer Service just tells you to “ignore the request.” Meanwhile, your Rover scores are also problematic.
Why Rover’s booking scoring system is an issue
In the past two weeks, there were three different dog owners who booked multiple dog owners all at once to see who would respond first, tried to finagle booking rates (although our pricing breakdown is on the page), and/or who booked me and then completely went missing. Unless you were constantly checking your profile, you’d have no idea that this person had booked you, chosen another pet owner and you’d already set aside time to watch this dog. When they book you, those calendar dates are temporarily unavailable so that no other pet owner can then book you for the same times and days. So you could lose out on a dog caregiving opportunity because this particular owner is not reliable.