COPPELL (WBAP/KLIF)- A Coppell family is fighting with a dog sitting company after their dog drowned in a sitter’s pool.
Amy Houston went on Rover.com to find a sitter for her 17 pound French Bulldog, Coco. Houston said she needed someone to look after Coco while she hosted her daughter’s high school graduation party.
Houston said she thought she could trust the sitter on Rover because of positive reviews and that she was a fellow French Bulldog owner. Houston said the website states a rule that dogs will not be left unattended outside, but that wasn’t the case.
“They said their number one priority is safety and they have a Rover guarantee but the guarantee isn’t very much…there are no safety guidelines, protocols or anything that holds Rover or the sitters responsible,” Houston said.
Houston was about to pick Coco up when she got a frantic text from the sitter saying Coco had escaped.
Houston said when she got there she saw the sitter holding a long net pole to get Coco out of her pool but then asked her daughter to get goggles and search. Houston described the pool as dirty covered in film, which made it very difficult to even see Coco inside the pool in the first place.
“To become a sitter all you need to do is pass a background check there’s nothing that is stringent the way they lead you to believe from a marketing standpoint…they looked like they had everything together and they truly cared about the safety of your dog but that’s not the case,” Houston said.
Houston stated in an email to Rover, Coco was about $2000 and the cremation was over $900. “I cannot begin to put a price on the mental anguish we are all experiencing individually and as a family,” she wrote.
In an email back to Houston, Rover said they would reimburse for the Vet cost but asked Houston to contact the sitter for remaining costs. “I didn’t want anything to do with the sitter after the incident…I figured Rover would handle it since they were the ones that brought her to me in the first place,” Houston said.
Coco, a one year old puppy, was very special to the Houston family. “She was my shadow would go with me everywhere,” Houston said. “She was such a loving dog with a great personality,” she added.
A lawsuit has already been filed against Rover from someone else. Robert Tauler, a Los Angeles Attorney, representing a service dog owner in the lawsuit alleges Rover makes false representations to consumers about the safety of using their app. He said the company refused to reveal the amount of dogs killed or injured under sitter’s care.
“Consumers should know the likelihood their dog will die using the Rover app,” said Tauler, in court papers. “Is there a 1 percent chance? Two percent? Instead of telling customers, Rover says it would take too much time to figure it out. Coming from a billion-dollar tech company this is insulting to all consumers.”
Houston has decided if she’ll take legal action but says she’ll never use a dog sitting app or website again. “We are only trusting family members from now on,” she said.
“We just want to warn people if they decide to book with Rover be very cautious, they are not at all who they make themselves out to be,” she said.
WBAP reached out to Rover, they refused to comment.
