A woman is demanding answers after catching her Rover dog sitter in a series of lies.
In a video with over 4.8 million views, TikTok user Mik Wild (@wild_milk) details why she believes she’s “being gaslit by my Rover dog sitter.”
According to Wild, she worked at Coachella and needed someone to watch her dog for the weekend. As her dog cannot be let alone for long periods of time, she required someone who could stay overnight.
Eventually, she found someone who said they could stay over. Initially, everything seemed promising.
“She shows up that Thursday morning right on time,” Wild recalls. “She seems very, like, nice—a little awkward, but like, mostly nice.”
Convinced she was the right pick, Wild says she decided to book her. The problems started almost immediately.
What Went Wrong With This Rover Sitter?
To start, Wild left a list of requirements for the care of her dog. On that list was a notice that the entryway of the apartment would be monitored by a Furbo pet camera, to which Wild had constant access. Wild says she verbally confirmed this with the pet sitter.
On the first day, things went well. Wild says she received consistent updates and that her dog seemed to be in good hands.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh. I found, like, a good dog sitter that I can use all the time,’” she says.
The next day, however, she noticed something strange.
“If you have a Furbo app, you know you get notifications for every single movement,” Wild says. “It’ll be like…’ Your dog is sitting there.’ ‘Your dog is standing there.’ … It gives you, like, a billion notifications.”
As she was busy with work, Wild says she tuned many of these notifications out. However, after waking up on Saturday, she went back through them—and discovered something unsettling.
“I wake up, and I noticed that I have a bunch of notifications from the whole night—that he’s been barking and howling all night,” Wild states. Looking at the video footage, Wild discovered that the dog was sadly waiting by the door—a sign, she says, that he was left alone all night. She calls this area the dog’s “depression spot.”
“He has been alone the entire night, and the last spotting of [the sitter] was, like, 9:30 PM on the Friday,” Wild summarizes. “So, she left at Friday, 9:30pm, roughly, and he’s been alone all night.”
Where Is The Sitter?
Trying to give the sitter the benefit of the doubt, Wild reached out via Rover chat to ask if everything was okay. According to Wild, the sitter claimed that she had only stepped out to move her car — something that didn’t make sense to Wild given the video evidence and her area’s street sweeping schedule.
“Five minutes later, she sends me a picture of him in his crate, like, as if she’s back in the house. And it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m back,’ like, ‘Everything’s fine now,’” Wild says. “I have a Furbo f—— camera, you dumb b—-. I can see [the dog]…when she’s sending me this picture.”
An hour later, Wild received a notification that the sitter had returned. She took the dog and left the apartment for over a day.
“I don’t have any notifications on my Furbo for a day and a half,” Wild states. “[She] just actually took my dog out of my apartment to somewhere. … [She] doesn’t tell me and then is sending me pictures as if she’s in my house. But she’s not, because I can see on the Furbo camera that no one’s home.”
The Bizarre Aftermath
Finally, Wild informed the sitter that she would be returning home. At this point, Wild got a notification from her Furbo camera that the sitter returned with her dog.
Upon entering the apartment, everything seemed alright on the surface. Still, Wild decided to send a message to the sitter noting her concerns and pointing out some of the sitter’s provable lies.
In response, the sitter sent a confusing message that contained several characteristic traits of AI-generated text. Rather than try to figure out what the sitter was trying to say (or avoid saying), Wild asked her directly if she stayed at the apartment on Friday night, an arrangement to which the pair previously agreed.
The sitter answered by referring Wild to Rover support—then, it seems, blocking her.
After this, Wild did a further examination of her apartment and found that the sitter had not been following her dog’s specific directions for her food, leading her to wonder if the dog was even properly fed in her absence.
Rover Doesn’t Help
Concerned, Wild reached out to Rover support.
“I made a full case to Rover,” she explains. “Like, I just called someone, explained this whole thing, … and I was like, ‘I want a refund for sure’—and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s the sitter’s discretion because they’re independent contractors.’”
“I’m like, ‘You think she’s gonna give me a refund?’” retorted Wild.
Wild then speculated that the sitter carefully utilized Rover’s chat function to make it seem as though she was caring for the dog, even as Wild could prove she wasn’t.
Other Rover Horror Stories
Wild isn’t the only person to have a bad experience with the Rover app.
For example, one dog owner hired a Rover sitter. When they returned, they discovered that the sitter had attempted to feed their animals Traeger grill pellets instead of food.
Another dog owner hired a Rover sitter that was both expensive and highly rated. While the sitter claimed to be taking good care of the dog, an examination of the dog owner’s security cameras found that the sitter not only didn’t follow directions but barely interacted with the animal at all.
Finally, one woman says she left her dog with a Rover sitter and came back to find that her dog died and was cremated.
Rover itself lists methods for reporting issues with past stays on its website. Still, as users like Wild have found, these methods do not always work to immediately resolve the issue.
Commenters Are Furious
In the comments section, users expressed their anger about this situation.
“She definitely thought you’d be too busy to check the camera,” said a user.
“Not to mention the house sitting vs drop in visit price is very different. You paid for house sitting!” exclaimed another.
Others questioned why the standards for Rover appeared to be so low.
“Our teenager sits for Rover, literally he takes his gaming system and parks on their couch for 48 straight hours,” explained a commenter. “His client list is so packed full because the bar is on the FLOOR for what a good rover sitter is.”
“This is making me realize I would be a great pet sitter cause you need me to just chill and make sure your dog is fed and cuddled? Can I bring a crochet project?” added another. “You can keep all the cameras on if you just delete the footage of me farting lol.”
There Is An Update
Wild later posted an update video saying that Rover called her “at 8:00am stat” the next morning.
“They said, ‘We’re gonna give you a full refund, and we’re gonna give you a credit for your next booking,'” Wild says. She also says she was instructed to fill out an incident report.
Overall, Wild says that she does not blame Rover for the incident. She further states that the sitter previously had good reviews, making it difficult for Rover to predict this behavior.
“Ultimately, I really don’t blame Rover. I know that’s uncool to say but this situation is really hard to mitigate. She had good reviews, all of her messages were great, we met in person and she seemed fine, so I’m not really sure Rover could have done anything to prevent this,” Wild wrote in an email to BroBible. “That being said, I do think they could incorporate features that require the photo updates to be taken in real time since she clearly was using old photos to look like she was at my house.”
Wild added that she had not heard from the sitter since posting her video.
“She blocked me after I asked her point blank if she had slept at my house on Friday,” she wrote. “I am looking over my shoulder tho because I’m sure she’s seen the viral video at this point and she clearly has some sociopathic tendencies lol.”
@wild_milk she picked the wrong one
BroBible reached out to Rover and Wild via email.