Gloria

Unfortunately, Gloria was not a match for our dog and I would not recommend her. I’m going to be very honest with my feedback to be able to help other people, especially those with large dogs.

First, communication during the booking process was simply bad. I made the request when I got home after our meetup, at 18.29 according to the app. We had agreed that Gloria would accept it and I would drop Zena off the next day at 8 - this was important for me because I wanted to avoid peak hour. With no response 3 hours later, I sent her a message with Zena’s vet number, just in case she had missed the e-mail with the booking request. I went to bed with uncertainty because Gloria had no reaction whatsoever. In the morning, already stressed by not knowing what to do, I sent her another message at 6 asking her to confirm that I could drop my dog off. Once it was 7.30 – the time I had planned to leave- I assumed Zena would have to stay home alone and I would be in the office for half day only, so I went to the park to take her for a long walk before I left. Gloria accepted the request at 7.41, saying it just “slipped out of her mind” (!). This is not good when you are dealing with other people’s dogs and I thought it was disrespectful of my time and schedule, but I chose to be patient and still dropped Zena off - much later, during peak hour, and in a rush.

An hour after I arrived in the office, Gloria called me in distress and said she was in a park, and that Zena had got overexcited and had bit her. She acknowledged it was playful and not aggressive but told me it was “too much” because of her size (she is about the height of a Boxer, although Gloria’s profile remarks she has shared houses with even the biggest breeds); then asked me to go pick her up. I was shocked because Zena never gets overexcited during walks, but being 10 months old, it could be possible that hanging with someone new in an unknown park was overwhelming for her. I advised Gloria to remove Zena from the overexciting environment until I could come, and to give her some chews I especially left for her. It still surprises me that Gloria’s profile claims she has a lot of experience with dogs of all breeds, personalities and sizes (even traumatised dogs, which is not the case of mine), but failed to recognise the common behaviour of an overexcited pup and redirect her attention, which is dog 101.

In the end, my partner left his work to pick Zena up and found Gloria, almost 2 hours later, still sitting on a bench in the park while Zena was across the road with an unknown person, apparently a friend of Gloria who she had called for help, as if Zena was an unmanageable, dangerous beast. My dog showed too much excitement for 5 minutes and Gloria handed her to a complete stranger… then told my partner Zena is not socialised (!), a remark I find utterly offensive, because since the beginning we invested time and effort in educating ourselves and Zena and exposing her to different environments and people and, as a consequence, she is a calm and well-behaved dog.

Overall, I paid for a (full day) of pet sitting so I could relax, but instead I had to stress about this poorly managed situation shortly after I got to the office. I trusted Gloria with my dog because I assumed she would take care of her as an “experienced pet sitter”, but she was clearly uncapable of doing so.

Gloria is great! We have a rescue dog. She knows how to handle her.