MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – We are in summer vacation season, a time when plenty of pet parents leave their loved ones with strangers or hire a sitter through a service.
But what if your pet is lost while you’re away?
That’s exactly what happened to two South Florida pet owners, and now they are on their own searching for their family member.
Hannah Lopez is devastated her dog Timmy is missing.
“That was my first ever dog that’s been a puppy,” she said. “I raised him.”
She used to run around with her 2-year-old Aussie doodle day and night, and now her whole family is lost without their 50-pound grey and white fluff ball after she says their pet sitter lost Timmy while they were in the Dominican Republic.
“She’s like, ‘well Timmy ran away when I went to turn in another dog to another customer. and he ran away,’” Eric Lopez recalled being told by the sitter.
Timmy was being cared for at a home in southwest Miami-Dade on June 24 when he went missing.
The Lopez family used Rover.com to first find their dog sitter. This was their third time leaving Timmy with the sitter when the tragedy occurred.
“She was on Rover before,” said Eric Lopez. “We even went and took the trouble of going to her house and doing like a meet and greet with the dog, we tried to do everything right.”
They have put up hundreds of fliers, launched drones and blasted online posts.
Not only have they upped the reward to $2,000, but the entire family is out on Krome Avenue holding up signs, hoping someone will recognize missing Timmy.
But Eric Lopez feels his pet sitter has left him in the dark.
“We went to knock on the door, she didn’t open the door for us, so we had to call the police to get our dog’s stuff back,” he said. “I would expect her to be out with us looking for the dog as hard as we were looking, especially since she lost our dog.”
Local 10 News tried to reach the sitter as well, but she refused to speak about the incident.
A similar situation happened to Dylan Hurtado.
“Her credentials looked good, everything that she explained sounded authentic, I said that she was a good fit,” he said.
Hurtado hired a five-star-rated pet sitter he found on Rover.com.
But while he was in Japan in late March, he found out from a message in the app that his 10-pound red toy poodle puppy named “Michael Jackson” also went missing.
“She told us, ‘Hey, I don’t know if Rover has contacted you yet, but Michael Jackson is missing,’” Hurtado recalled.
The dog sitter told him she was watching another dog.
Both were in a kennel together in a back room that was left open when the sitter said Michael Jackson escaped.
“How did the dog get out of the house?” he asked. “That’s where I’m confused because she changed her story multiple times.”
Hurtado said he sent countless messages to Rover.com and filed a police report.
Local 10 went to Brownsville, where Michael Jackson went missing and found missing dog flyers for him, but couldn’t reach the dog sitter.
Rover.com sent Local 10 a statement, which read, in part:
“Most of us at Rover are pet parents ourselves, and we can only imagine the heartbreak and stress these owners are experiencing. We join them in hoping for a swift reunion. The pet care providers involved in the two referenced incidents are no longer able to offer services through the platform.
“In the rare event that a pet becomes separated during a booked stay from a care provider, Rover’s 24/7 Trust & Safety team takes immediate action to support search efforts. Our team works diligently to assist by funding printed flyers, posting on pet-finding platforms that alert local shelters and veterinary clinics, offering a significant reward for the found pet, and notifying nearby sitters and walkers in our community. All bookings on our platform are also protected by the Rover Guarantee, which provides up to $25,000 in reimbursement for eligible claims.”
It’s not exactly the reassurance those families are looking for.
More than money, both just want their dogs back.
“Rover has to be more responsible in who they pick to be a pet sitter because anybody can collect money to take care of a pet but not everybody cares enough to take care of a pet,” said Eric Lopez.
Both dogs are microchipped but still missing, and these families are devastated and heartbroken.
Anyone who decides to use a third-party resource is urged to read the fine print on what responsibility they will take in an emergency.
As for Rover.com, the company claims these situations are rare and uncommon.
If you see Timmy, please call 786-356-8001.
If you see Michael Jackson, please call 786-445-5968.
