The night before our wedding, while under the supervision of Fetch Pet Care (Palm Desert), my dog was lost, hit by a car and died that night due to many careless mistakes. Then, they made legal threats after we wrote a bad review on yelp and google. Full details below. I never thought that something like this could have ever happened to me, much less that I would have to write a post like this. After a year of grieving, my husband and I never planned on sharing the details of the tragic death of our dog, but after everything we’ve been through with Fetch Pet Care (a nationwide online service that matches pets with sitters/walkers) we felt compelled to share details that might help inform some of you with your pet care choices as we feel this was a preventable tragedy. Since rescuing Mickey six years ago, my life revolved around her and we did everything together. So inevitably, she and her sister Ellen would be in our wedding. For those who knew Mickey, you knew that due to her separation anxiety, she could sometimes open doors when left alone. As all of our family and friends whom we normally trust with our dogs were a part of our wedding, we needed to hire a sitter. I found Fetch Pet Care Palm Desert, who had a service specifically for hotel pet sitting. After I disclosed Mickey’s behavior on an online application as well as over the phone, Fetch matched us with a sitter we were told was experienced and capable of handling Mickey’s situation. That night, we reminded the sitter about Mickey and gave her specific instructions to never leave Mickey alone. My mother even told her multiple times to even be cautious when using the restroom as it was out of sight from the door. We will never know how Mickey was lost and why the sitter neglected our basic instructions and wasn’t watching our dog. We spent our rehearsal dinner desperately searching for her for two hours with our family and friends until I found her hit by a car. We immediately took her to the vet but she didn’t survive. To make matters worse, we later discovered Fetch had waited over 35 minutes to tell us they had lost our dog. This included 10 minutes where the sitter actually had Mickey in sight and could have called us. Our rehearsal dinner was only 5 minutes away. A worker at the hotel who tried to help secure Mickey urged the sitter to call the owner during this time. She refused. Months later we were ready to share our experience. Fetch responded by threatening us with legal action and denied the entire incident. They wrote that my review was “completely false allegations from a distraught woman.” They even lied about having statements from my own bridal party and said it was my own dog’s fault for getting lost. We could not believe how incredibly offensive and insensitive their responses were. Despite pressure from Fetch, we never signed a non disclosure agreement to keep us from sharing our story. Fetch would later remove their legal threats and reposition their response to be apologetic, saying they have been “deeply sympathetic to the matter” the entire time. Obviously, this was not true. Even in their apology, they continued to try to minimize fault by lying that they didn’t know Mickey might try to open doors if left alone. Mickey should not have been alone at all. How she managed to open a heavy hotel door on her own will remain a mystery to us. We hope our story brings to light the changes that need to be made in the pet care services today such as who they employ as their sitters along with increased safety measures and emergency procedures for all pets. No one else should have to experience a pain like ours when the pure unconditional love of a dog is abruptly taken away from you due to the careless mistakes of a professional and subsequently treated as we were by Fetch. Sadly, most state laws still view pets as property and consider them replaceable so we cannot fight for them when situations like ours happen. I know we are not alone in loving our dogs as more than just pets, but as members of our family, and should be treated as such. We couldn’t save Mickey but we hope that by sharing our tragedy we can help prevent anymore careless deaths. Losing Mickey and not having my girl in my wedding has been one of the most painful memories of my life. I miss her everyday.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/ba0ib5/fetch_pet_care_lost_our_dog_the_night_before_our/
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