My wife and I dog sit through Rover, we have for about 7 years (though we have only taken repeat clients for the past 3). It’s true that there is huge variation between people on the site. We’ve had clients come to us after not great past experiences, like a sitter who took ten dogs at a time and kept them in a separate building (illegal in many places, you usually need a kennel license to have that many dogs, and in any case not the kind of in-home setting people expect from the site), or one who locked their dog in a room for many hours while she was home and blamed the dog (and refused to take him again - awesome dog by the way) for chewing the door frame.
Rover is essentially Airbnb+care.com for pets, and you need to be careful who you leave your pets with. As a company they’re usually really great to work with. They charge minimal fees, they provide insurance and an on-call vet (which we’ve used several times), they make booking and messaging with sitters easy, and that’s really all their job is.
That said, there’s also risks and variation in licensed kennels, too. Nowadays you can find plenty of kennels where the dogs have large private runs, and there are 24/7 streaming webcams you can look at whenever you want, and that’s awesome. At the same time, ~3 years ago the doggie day care a half mile from my house got shut down after a dog died while boarding there. They were keeping him in a cage much too small for his size with no water overnight, and investigation turned up other issues and abuse charges against the owner. Remember that at many facilities like this the employees leave for the night and come back in the morning.
If you’re looking for any sitter, Rover or not, insist on meeting them in person first - we always insist on a meet-and-greet in a neutral location with our own dog before booking a new client. Ask where the dogs will be kept, where they will sleep, how they’ll be monitored, whether there is someone home for most of the day (aka not leaving for a full work day), what’s the most dogs they sit at once and how and when are those dogs separated from each other. Make sure the prospective sitter is asking you the questions they should want the answers to, like feeding schedule, allergies and medical history, level of comfort around other pets and people, activity level, and who their vet is. Make sure they are interacting well with your dog at the initial meeting. Ask how often they keep in touch during stays (my wife sends pictures and updates daily). Ask if they’re pet CPR and first aid certified.
That said, the average dog lifespan is around 40,000 days, and Rover claims there have been over 40 million stays booked through its site (I don’t know the average duration, but in our experience the average is probably around 3 days). Most people stop traveling when their dogs are very sick. But even so, it would be bizarre if no dogs had ever died during stays, including dogs with no prior medical problems. Statistically there would almost have to be hundreds of deaths and at least as many dogs getting loose. CNN gave six anecdotes and no other data - tragedies, and probably some misconduct and bad decisions by sitters, but not necessarily indicative of a systemic problem.
We’ve sat for a few dogs with serious medical conditions including blindness and diabetes (with insulin shots), and even in one case an inability to walk more than a few steps, but those were mainly recurring clients with aging pets. Twice we’ve had to ask pet parents to return early, once because the dog started having serious digestive problems, and once because a dog’s vet made a significant medical error, claiming a cancerous cyst was benign (it burst a few days into the stay) and not mentioning that prednisone can both increase incontinence and prevent proin from working properly (and it’s not easy to find doggy diapers for a 90 pound dog on short notice - we bought human Depends and used medical tape to hold them in place on a canine body). We’ve also refused stays we thought were too risky and advised prospective clients to either cancel their trip or board with a vet. Once a prospective client wanted to board a dog who was scheduled for a major (urgent) surgery during the stay, and Rover’s vet line had to back us up on refusing that one b/c the owner was not happy that we weren’t willing to take the dog (who was at risk of serious complications at any moment), take them to the surgery, and handle the after care (which would have included administering medication every hour for several days).
@Jeroen_Metselaa There is a lot of variation, regionally and over time, in how people care for their dogs. Some dogs would be perfectly content and reasonably safe with that kind of arrangement, assuming you have an actually-reliable teenager or neighbor around, which isn’t a given. Others need chronic medical care, or have a carefully controlled diet and feeding schedule, or just would be happier with a different setup. When we go away we leave our dog and cat with my in-laws, but when we got married we had someone come stay at the house with them, because our cat has recurring health problems and needs more frequent monitoring.
