Sure, if you have healthy dogs without major hangups and you’re just going away for the weekend. We used Rover a lot when traveling for a week or more at a time while one of our dogs was towards the end of his life and was fully incontinent, needed medicine several times a day, and taking care of him was just generally a real job requiring training, lack of squeamishness and serious attention throughout the day, rather than a “just keep the food bowl filled and walk him a few times a day” kind of situation. We paid extra for sitters who had some level of elder dog and/or emergency training until we realized Rover wasn’t verifying those claims at all and it was mostly bs.
We stopped using the service after one of our other dogs was mauled by the Rover sitter’s dog, who she had claimed was going to be kept completely separate without possibility of interaction. Our little guy nearly died, required multiple surgeries and months of complex aftercare, and was left with a giant scar down his side. We finally got Rover to reimburse us for the vet bills, but it was a real fight, and the sitter is still listed on the site- partly because when Rover contacted her, she claimed our dogs had attacked each other, even though that was later disproven.
We had a couple of other, less dramatic negative experiences, too- mostly just situations where it was clear the dogs had been kenneled or otherwise just not given the care and attention we’d tried to seek out. I regret that it took so long to realize that the trustworthy Rover sitters are the ones who never have availability, making the whole system pointless and dangerous.
For those considering the service, the best test we found was how willing/eager the sitter was to share updates, photos, and/or livestreams. The ones who had nothing to hide were proud of their environment and efforts. The others made excuses.
