21 ms·

My dog was killed on a walk with a walker ordered through Wag

775 points by griffinmb 8y ago

craftyguy 8y ago
I actively block any/all facebook domains for privacy reasons, is this mirrored elsewhere? The 'web' link here in HN is not showing anything useful.
- nbrempel 8y ago
  https://www.outline.com/AtNgH3 https://www.outline.com/AtNgH3
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- r2ut3u 8y ago
  https://telegra.ph/Wag-Incident-01-18 https://telegra.ph/Wag-Incident-01-18
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- crazysim 8y ago
  You don't happen to keep a copy of Tor Browser around do you? Just toss it in there.
- gjs278 8y ago
  nobody should have to commit extra effort to your endeavor. i’ll sum it up for you. the dog is dead. thanks for letting us know about your facebook policy.
idontpost 8y ago
Incredibly stupid decision to respond this way by Wag. How bad to you have to be at PR to screw this up? It's not hard. Liability in the case of harmed pets is extremely limited, so you just pay it all and apologize profusely. There's no way the bad press will be worth saving a couple thousand maximum. Absolute idiots.
- wyqydsyq 8y ago
  How to sink your own company in 1 easy step
- celestialcheese 8y ago
  Seriously. It should have been the easiest decision in the world for them - a persons' dog is more important than most other humans to most dog owners, yet the law treats dogs as nothing more than property. Pay up and grovel to these people. In-action doesn't make these things go away. EDIT: just read the non-disclosure section. I understand the impulse to do that, but it's a MUCH better gamble to just kill the story with boundless kindness.
  - Judgmentality 8y ago
    > a persons' dog is more important than most other humans to most dog owners, yet the law treats dogs as nothing more than property Something I've always found particularly infuriating is how police dogs are considered officers and often carries a worse punishment than attacking an actual police officer. Not because I am upset that the dogs are being protected, but that the police basically can shoot other people's dogs but nobody can touch their dogs. Jesus I am just going off on tangents tonight. I need to take a break for a bit.
    - berti 8y ago
      This made me really mad last year: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/108562071/police-shoot-family-dog-while-searching-for-wanted-man-in-nelson https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/108562071/police-shoot-fami... TL;DR police looking for somebody went to the wrong address, shot the family dog because it "attacked" a police dog (which was "unharmed by the incident"), and casually told the owners on their way out the door that their dog had died.
      - ajmurmann 8y ago
        Well, police training in the US takes on average 19 weeks, whereas in Germany it takes at least 130 weeks (https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_7709638 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_7709638). It takes 12-14 month to become a cosmetologist...
King-Aaron 8y ago
This makes my blood boil.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
This is mildly fascinating. Though not entirely unexpected. A quick Google for "pet sitting dog died" turns up a number of these stories. It seems a number of them are through these dog sitting services like Wag or Rover. Here's an interesting one I found not through a dog sitting service but just a roommate that had been asked to sit the dog while the owner was away. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/t7kv7/currently_dog_sitting_for_roommatedog_was_just/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/t7kv7/currently_... It must be awful for everyone involved. I suspect it's nothing unique to dog sitting services but that it occurs with a certain (albeit low) frequency as a phenomenon but that it's showing up through dog sitting services because there is a (1) a paper trail of the transaction and (2) a stable, visible entity on which to lay the blame. In the pre-sharing economy days this still happened. Only you vetted the sitter first and so you feel less justified blaming them because on some level you know you signed off on them. You also couldn't really go public and say "14 year old Jenny from Ashmore killed my dog" because you can't make a common enemy out of her and while people will feel for both of you, it's not actionable information for anyone. It's fascinating what phenomenon our society is making visible through new structures made possible by technology. It's awful for all involved to have this happen.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  I have to say that the problem is accountability. With this Wag incident, it appears the person selected through the platform was not the person who was caring for the pet. When I select someone to care for my pet, I know who they are, and can use my own signals to determine if they’re trustworthy and responsible. Wag doesn’t care, they’re just out to “crush it” (cost of business), and the contractor doesn’t care because it’s just another crap minimum wage job. Stop trusting platforms and acting shocked when the trust model breaks down. They are not designed for safety or trust, but to skim as much volume as possible from transaction flow.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    It definitely seems they could and need to do more to tighten up the accountability on the platform. No doubt about that. I don't know that it's accurate to say the contractor doesn't care. If they were a psychopath I could agree with that, but most people have had the experience of having either a pet, friend or relative die and know how deeply it affects people emotionally and to know you were responsible for that would likely generate a strong, negative visceral reaction. Edit: Platforms don't kill dogs; people do. Stop trusting people. Actually this is the part that fascinates me. On some level people expect things to never go wrong. Yet things going "wrong" is kind of the default. It's extremely hard to engineer a situation in which no one ever experiences a negative outcome. To the extent that you can attribute a cause to an outcome, you do. Infact, it's not at all clear whether the frequency of dogs dying while being sat by pet sitters is higher on platforms or higher when not through platforms. You'd actually have to do quite a lengthy, expensive analysis to compute the truth value of that. What can likely agree on is that we want the most safe and convenient system. I'm fascinated by thinking about the various trade-offs made when organizing a system one way vs. another. Are we trading more convenience for less safety? Or are we actually getting both more convenience AND more safety, but also increased observability is skewing our perception of the risk such that we think we have got a less safe system when in fact the opposite might be true? I don't have the answers. But damnit it's important to attempt to look at things the right way in an attempt to compute that actual reality.
yegle 8y ago
This happened recently: Wag! dog walker charged with animal cruelty; customers concerned about industry background checks http://www.ktvu.com/news/wag-dog-walker-charged-with-animal-cruelty-customers-concerned-about-industry-background-checks http://www.ktvu.com/news/wag-dog-walker-charged-with-animal-... EDIT: and the settlement letter sent from Wag: https://www.scribd.com/document/397139013/SNews-Copie19010815010 https://www.scribd.com/document/397139013/SNews-Copie1901081...
- defap 8y ago
  Wow. The walker kicks and whips the dog until it vomits blood and Wag offers a refund and a $100 credit as settlement. Who in the world wants Wag credits after an experience like that. If Wag wants to buy these folks’ silence, shouldn’t they at least make a non-insulting offer?
  - warent 8y ago
    This is terrifying behavior both on part of the walker and Wag. I don't blame Wag for having occasionally sketchy immoral actors that don't care about animals--that's essentially impossible to entirely prevent, especially as they continue scaling. However, their responses to these issues are extremely concerning and do not indicate a company that's managed well.
    - ataturk 8y ago
      You're starting to see what all these shitty tech companies have in common. None of them are about the subject matter or thing, they're about making fast money. Who the hell beats up on a dog if they're a paid dog walker? WTF?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - philwelch 8y ago
    If that was my pet, I might settle for the opportunity to kick and whip each and every cofounder until they vomit blood.
azhenley 8y ago
I hope they get a lawyer and keep us posted with updates.
- celestialcheese 8y ago
  The best they could hope for is compensation for lost/damaged property. It's messed up considering the human/dog bond, but AFAIK there isn't much they can do legally. If this gets picked up in the news cycles tomorrow that'll be FAR more damaging.
baroffoos 8y ago
There is obviously fault to be attributed to the walker by lying about what had happened but I think its worth thinking about how many animals are killed by cars on a regular basis. We probably all know someone whos pets were killed by cars and the local wildlife is regularly splattered across the roads. I think we need to seriously slow down the speed of our roads to avoid killing so many pets and endangered wildlife. Its possible the walker was doing nothing terribly wrong and the dog was hit and then the walker panicked and made some wrong choices in communication.
- theonemind 8y ago
  I really wish people would internalize that auto accidents rank pretty highly as a cause of death, and that we could all but make it disappear by just paying attention and putting safety first. A lot of people will do reckless things routinely to save 15% or 20% of the time off of a trip, and can't stand to pay attention to the road. We should really treat it like the dangerous activity it is. When I sit down to drive, I usually remind myself that I just want to get to the other side in one piece.
- dahdum 8y ago
  My thought is that the text from the walker saying the dog was home safe wasn’t the actual person who took the dog. In that case the vetted person subcontracted to someone else, and perhaps didn’t know the dog had died at the time of the text.
  - benatkin 8y ago
    This sounds likely to me. Maybe someone at Wag even suspects this happened but thinks it's better if Wag doesn't know about it.
- usaphp 8y ago
  > I think we need to seriously slow down the speed of our roads to avoid killing so many pets and endangered wildlife. You don’t need to drive fast to kill a dog running under your car. Even 20mph is enough to seriously injure a dog. Speed limit is not the problem here. Maybe auto pilot will fix the reaction time for the car needed to stop before the accident occurs
ravenstine 8y ago
I was going to reply with a reply about this being "statistically bound to happen", until I read this: > If we wanted to be compensated we had to agree not to tell anyone what happened, we could not leave any negative reviews, we could not make posts on social media, we could not hold Wag or the walker responsible, and only then would Wag reimburse us for Winnie’s cremation. When we responded that we would not sign the agreement, we were told that the agreement would remain available in case we changed our minds. The next day, we received an email stating that the agreement was now “null and void.” What assholes. (Wag) All these gig economy apps are super shady.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Wag are jerkoffs it seems, but it's still 'statistically likely to happen'. Accidents happen in all things, so I think it should boil down mostly to whatever the reality is there. ... though Wag has shown some bad form obviously.
  - Fomite 8y ago
    Given it's statistically bound to happen, Wag should have been able to anticipate this in a way that was not , if not the worst approach, arguably pretty close.
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      I'm not defending Wag in the least.
    - swish_bob 8y ago
      A cursory google indicates it's not even that uncommon. There appear to be quite a few "Wag killed my dog" stories going back a number of years.
- baseballMan 8y ago
  I feel like part of why they're shady is because some of the people that partake in them are shady. It's relatively easy to get accepted to them (especially services like this).
sammycdubs 8y ago
This is a fantastic way to completely destroy your business. What a naive way to try and cover for a lack of investment in safety. My heart breaks for that dog and her family. Absolutely unbelievable.
gjs278 8y ago
if you are so busy that you need uber to walk your dog, maybe don’t buy one
- ValleyOfTheMtns 8y ago
  I dropped my 2 year old son at day care this morning. Should I have not had a child if I can't look after him all day, every day?
  - chuinard 8y ago
    Not really the same comparison. That human will eventually be able to take care of itself and do a lot more for this world than the dog ever will. Pets don't always make sense, and I tend to agree with parent. Or maybe Wag should just connect you one-time with someone reliable in your area. It seems stupid to have strangers all the time with your dog. As the top comment mentioned, people used to just get someone reliable nearby, but the tech has eliminated the need for social interaction and communication.
    - quickthrower2 8y ago
      So don't own a dog unless you can take them for a walk every day without fail for the next 15 years without using a dog sitter / walker.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - gjs278 8y ago
    maybe dude. you can ask your kid in 20 years if you want. make ridiculous comments, get ridiculous responses. you obviously know a kid is not a dog. a dog is a piece of property, that’s why the police can literally shoot it and nobody goes to jail.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
damm 8y ago
I think this is the problem with social media / networking... it used to be when I was a young kid that if someone wanted t heir dog walked ... you would find someone in your neighborhood that you knew. Now we use online services and trust people blindly... As far as the person who lost their dog; I am sorry. I know I did not cause the harm; but it's the only thing I can say. As a pet owner I would be mortified. I also don't trust anyone with my pets (and they don't trust anyone). So it works out.
- swayvil 8y ago
  People are weirdly alone these days, their faces always in a screen. When you gotta trust somebody, blindly appears to be the only option.
- randycupertino 8y ago
  > Now we use online services and trust people blindly... It's also so shockingly to create a fake profile and hire people off of reddit slavelabour to write you good reviews. And meanwhile the pet owners hiring randos off Wag to walk their dogs feel like they did their due diligence to vet these gig workers by scrolling through the reviews and selecting the highest rated person.
azhenley 8y ago
Having just got a puppy less than two weeks ago, this is terrifying. I can’t imagine the feeling of helplessness and shock that they must have felt.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  My suggestion is that it is okay to use wag or rover, but treat the walkers as nothing more than strangers that you hand your dog over to, until you develop trust via another method.
- jarfil 8y ago
  If you get ten more, at some point you realize that death happens, and all you can do is care the best you can for them... then get a new one. Of course this doesn't change the fact that Wag requiring an NDA in order to take responsibility, is a total insult.
- runarberg 8y ago
  Two weeks is hardly enough time to know your dog, and yet your bond is already really strong. Your bond will most likely strengthen exponentially over the next year or two. So the feeling is probably worse then you can imagine.
Judgmentality 8y ago
I admittedly wasn't a huge fan of Wag ever because it always seemed like taking the lowest available bidder to walk your dog (instead of someone who truly loves dogs and has years of experience training them), but I'm curious how much of an influence Softbank has been since their investment. Everybody talks about how Softbank is the smartest money in Silicon Valley. Obviously time will tell, but I feel like Softbank is actually the dumbest money and just has more cash to throw around than anyone else. That said, this is really an unnecessary tangent to what is truly a horrible incident and I grieve for the dog owners.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  To expand a little on your first point - the market of people who truly love dogs, or love them enough to think of walking them to earn money outside of the Uber for X economy, is probably tiny. Most people just have regular jobs and/or don't need the money that much and/or don't love dogs that much. You can scale the access to being a dog walker but you can't scale the "I give a shit about dogsness". Maybe the sharing economy model is just a poor one in certain cases?
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Haha a little off topic but I'm curious. I work in a Softbank invested startup (not Wag). Could you elaborate about Softbank being the most silly part? Is it silly in this case, or in general about companies Softbank invests in?
  - Judgmentality 8y ago
    I'm just unimpressed by their investments, and their ridiculously large sums of money thrown into companies which may not need it. I worked at a Softbank company before, and while the fundraise was heralded as a brilliant move at the time the few in the know realize that the company likely would have shut down had Softbank not put up their ridiculously large sum of money (the public and media still love this company and knows nothing of this). Obviously this is just my opinion on their investment strategy and time will tell - they make money or they don't. But I have insider information that at least one of their bigger deals is definitely going to fail.
dbg31415 8y ago
I went on a few dates with a girl who was a walker for Wag. She had just moved to the town I'm from, and she was between jobs. She had a background as veterinary assistant, was great with my dogs, and seemed over qualified for the work. One day she was upset and I asked her why. She said it was because Wag had terminated her employment and deleted her profile, with over 100 high reviews. (She had been very proud of the number of perfect reviews she had gotten.) She said it was because she called animal control on one of the clients. At first, I was like, "Holy hell, don't narc on your customers... no wonder they banned you... anyone who pays for a dog walker would surely be a good dog owner..." But then she showed me the pictures of what was clearly an puppy mill. My friend was only there to walk one or two of the dogs, the dogs that were used for photos, and there were 20+ other dogs locked in cages. She did the humane thing, documented the issues, reported it to Wag... Wag did nothing, didn't even bother to move her to a different client, or block her from being sent back to that client. So on like the third visit, she escalated it to animal control. Naturally the client got mad and complained to Wag, and that's when Wag fired my friend. But... seems like the right thing to do in that situation. I saw these pictures on her phone, dogs that looked so sad. Penned up in cages where they could barely turn around, and all very pregnant. Anyone with a heart would have done what my friend did. And anyone working as a dog walker should have a heart. Wag is a business, they only care about the bottom line. It's not a service I would ever use for my own dogs. Edit: Went from +7 to -2 pretty quick. Hmm, maybe Wag PR is listening in?
- matte_black 8y ago
  HN has been getting a lot of coordinated down votes lately.
  - gaius 8y ago
    You will notice it always coincides with when the techbros on the West Coast wake up.
    - matte_black 8y ago
      I feel like people don’t just downvote you once and move on, I feel that they go into your whole history and just downvote you as much as they can to wound your reputation, then they tell their friends. Sickening.
ezoe 8y ago
I was more surprised that service like Wag exists.
- i_am_nomad 8y ago
  San Francisco was at one point inundated with their “Finally, an app for me to pee!” billboards and signs.
  - metildaa 8y ago
    What was that, a bathroom rental service? Sounds like profiteering off basic bodily functions, in a way that was previously uncommon & often socially unacceptable.
    - wutbrodo 8y ago
      It's Wag, a service that matches you with available dog walkers. The pee-ers in question were pets.
      - mikey_p 8y ago
        That said, there is actually an app for finding and paying to use a restroom: https://www.good2go.global/index.html https://www.good2go.global/index.html
matz1 8y ago
If he care the dog so much, the question is why is he trusting it to some stranger ?
- _tulpa 8y ago
  Because trust in strangers is one of the things Wag (and Uber et al) are supposed to provide when you pay them.
- setr 8y ago
  Most interaction in life eventually boil down to trusting in strangers (that you pay). Your kids? Schools, daycares, after-school programs, schooltrips, babysitting; let them do anything on their own? All stranger interactions. At most you get transitive trust. But that doesn’t amount to much. No, the main reason we’re able to sustain this model is that we believe in two big functions: 1. Most people operate nuetrally, if not well. 2. We have a strong deterrent for the biggest misbehaviors/risks by strangers, through government reprecussion. You want to not rely on trusting strangers at all? I’m not sure you can do that except by exiting any major population, and returning to reliance on small, close-knit communities, and strong family-oriented relationships (eg first, second and third generations of family living in the same small circle). But thats a far more substantive change than I think you’re imagining.
  - matz1 8y ago
    Its not that you should not trust anyone. If I trust my dog to someone, then I have to accept that there are risk that the dog my die horribly. Likewise, if you trust your dog to me, then you better be ready to accept the risk that your dog might die.
    - _tulpa 8y ago
      Then you just find a random stranger and don’t bother paying for a service which ostensibly exists partly to guarantee some level of trust.
      - deleted 8y ago
Johnny555 8y ago
I've never heard of Wag, but my wife signed up to be a pet sitter for a competing site Rover and they never did any evaluation or background check. She signed up for an account, uploaded a photo of herself and our dog, and within a few days, she started getting petsitting requests.
Fins 8y ago
Seems to be something that, sadly, is to be expected from this generation of SV and SV-like companies that believe than any problem (usually a very First-World problem) can be solved with technology, and all the bad things, and negative externalities, can and should ber swept under the rug on the way to a billion dollar exit.
- philpem 8y ago
  What you've described sounds like SV (but not just SV) "Techbro" culture to me...
  - Fins 8y ago
    Exactly that. Move fast, break things, and pretend it's a good thing. Obviously not an SV-only thing, but the culture in SV glorifies it instead of making it something you should be ashamed of.
- warp_factor 8y ago
  You are perfectly right, all of this is a result of the SV techbro culture of growing at all cost.
fanzhang 8y ago
The Streisand effect strikes again. This is what happens when the legal department has no customer empathy, and to these lawyers, everything is a nail to their hammer of a contract. Some people mentioned that Wag should have offered more and demanded less -- absolutely! But think about if Wag even said "sorry this happened, that's all we can say for your terrible loss" even without a compensation offer and without an insulting NDA. It probably wouldn't have pushed the owner to post this and for it to end up on HN -- and now the world knows. I honestly believe Wag and Rover and other large companies that offer pet walking services should put up a very high liability bond for pet injury -- on the order of $10K or more. That way they have skin in the game to vet their walkers better. Most owners value their dogs above that, and that incentive is the only way to get these corporations to listen.
- crowbahr 8y ago
  Perhaps have the walkers be bonded as well? Even if it's 1k that's a pretty serious amount of money to lose, but low enough a barrier of entry that you still have people making a go at it. Obviously it gets returned to you when you close your Wag Walker account.
  - thatoneuser 8y ago
    I don't think you understand how little these gig apps pay. 1k deposit would exclude a very large percentage of the workers. And frankly - who in the hell in their right mind would PAY a company a grand so start working for them? That's sketchy af.
    - astura 8y ago
      You're right, but maybe that's the point? You're excluding people who are just desperate for money but keeping the people who want to build (or already own) a pet care business.
      - arkades 8y ago
        It’s dog walking, not artisanal mango cultivation. The vast majority of people picking up unskilled labor gigs through apps are just trying to make a buck. It’s almost the entire source of the app’s labor pool. And it’s not an inherently bad trait.
crispytx 8y ago
That's the problem with lawyers and administrators. Wag should have just ignored their lawyers and did the right thing. It's pretty easy to see what happened here, the executives/administrators/lawyers at Wag are cowards, and were too afraid to compensate these poor people without some sort of legal agreement covering their asses.
issa 8y ago
I realize this wasn't the point of the story, and I'm so sorry this happened to anyone's dog. But please do not buy dogs from breeders when there are plenty of amazing dogs waiting to be rescued at shelters.
- crowbahr 8y ago
  While you're correct do note that not everyone can handle or wants to go through the pain of training a shelter dog. A dog you've raised from 8 weeks old is very different than a dog someone else has already abused and abandoned. Even if they're only 6 months old the habits have been learned and they're hard to break. Young puppies go instantly from shelters for that reason, and few people want to adopt a pit bull with behavior problems.
  - eropple 8y ago
    Yup. Both our dogs are shelter dogs and we love 'em, but in the newest dog's case--he's probably around three, we've had him for about six months--there are enough issues that a lot of people wouldn't want to deal with some people just couldn't, while still being very good caretakers of better-adjusted dogs. In ours's case: he's not a barker and he's incredibly gentle, but he's both dumb as a post (not the shelter-dog problem, and also usually just hilarious) and extremely timid (that one is) to the point of frustration. Speak excitedly? He'll slowly sink to the floor and look worried. Tape a cable to the floor with gaff tape? He won't go over it[0]--probably because he'd experienced an invisible fence, we think. Move a chair to the other side of the living room? He sits in the corner and quietly freaks out for two hours. Leave after such a traumatic furniture adjustment? You might come home and he's nervous-chewed something. (Like, to this point, five pairs of my shoes. I am literally bankrolling Nike by my re-purchases of Air Force 1's. It doesn't help that now he's figured out how to open the doors that don't latch in our house--we're doomed, I tell you. Doomed.) He's a great dog. But we knew going into it that dealing with his issues would take some effort, and there definitely are people who could be enriched by having a dog (they're great!) but don't have the capacity to deal with even a relatively minor case like ours. The downside to this sort of generosity of the benefit of the doubt, of course, is that then there are people who can't hack it and who create more shelter dogs. I don't have a good solution for that, of course. But my intuition is more good is created than bad. [0] - His pathfinding is just not good. He'll go the entire way around the house to avoid walking over a scary black tape line. He'll also squeeze under tables, chairs, benches, etc. to avoid innocuous spaces or hop over the couch to avoid going around it. And this dog is a mess of Labrador, Staffordshire, and German Shepherd, with legs like a greyhound--watching him accordion on down to squeeze under a foot-high bench is hilarious.
ncr100 8y ago
Trust is not bought or rightly earned through 5 stars. Our technology is being used to perpetuate tragedies. We have no ethics organisations, for encouraging ethical usage of Computer Science.
A4ET8a8uTh0 8y ago
I can relate and no doubt fellow dog owners do as well. Random death of a family member can make a sane man mad. The author seems to handle it better than I would have. For a company that seemingly specializes in this service, it should be, if not a dead blow, then a very painful lesson. That said. Experian was never punished for what they did. Maybe if they killed a puppy, people would care.
ajmurmann 8y ago
The most outrageous part to be always are the NDAs attached to settlements. Those should be illegal. It should not be for the two parties to decide to withhold information from the public. Usually it's the public who has an interest in this information becoming widely available and not the person agreeing to the NDA.
- busterarm 8y ago
  If it weren't for NDAs, most settlements would never happen. Lawyers and court fees are a bargain compared to extremely bad press.
thomasec 8y ago
We had a similar (but thankfully, less serious) thing happen with Rover. We booked a dog sitter for 4 days with a woman named "Leslie". When we showed up to "Leslie's" place, the lady who we met did not match the person in the photo, and barely spoke any english. We were on our way to the airport, so I really didn't have a choice at that point but to leave our dog (I realize now I should have done more vetting, or met this individual in-person ahead of time, but the person I booked - Leslie - had dozens of positive reviews). After dropping off our dog, we received extremely vague updates/text messages over the next few days, and no photos. Things like - "Your dog is doing great", "he is behaving so well", etc... Whenever I asked for a photo, they would say they'd send one the next day. Needless to say, it became obvious that whoever was watching our dog was not the person we were communicating with. Thankfully, our dog doesn't have special medication, or a specific diet that we needed to monitor. Who knows what would have happened if there was an emergency, and we needed to get in touch with one another. These services like Wag and Rover have literally one job, and that is to make sure you trust the individuals watching your pet. The response from Rover was completely thoughtless, and it was clear they were going to do nothing to investigate the situation. The fact that they don't care that people like this woman who clearly has some sort of questionable scheme going on just shows how little they care about protecting their customer's pets.
- sizzle 8y ago
  Why not put an IP camera on your pooch and front yard for the peace of mind and to verify they are actually doing their job?
  - bestnameever 8y ago
    I would imagine that placing a camera on a dog in this situation would be pretty illegal in a lot of states, especially if their dog is being card for in another person's home.
    - dustincnj79 8y ago
      Yes most likely it would be illegal in a private residence however in many situations if the individual was advertising doggy day care then the individuals who's pets attend would have the right to record without the consent of the individual unless there was some specific statement in the terms and conditions stating that would be an inappropriate action on their premises which then should lead an individual to reconsider who watches their dog. Would you allow your child to be taken care of by a daycare business would not allow parental surveillance or supervision during any point of the day I would hope not and if in either situation you sign something stating you would not be allowed to surveil your pet or child and you continue using that a service then unfortunately the liability I believe is then on the consumer. Remember the old adage buyer beware. There are some pretty sick human beings in this world who often pray on the weak or innocent and it is the pet owners or parents responsibility make sure that their pet or child is not being abused especially when they are not able to verbally express when atrocities take place!
wewake 8y ago
Are we going to link FB posts on HackerNews now?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
krisoft 8y ago
How do the owners know the dog is dead and not stolen? Wouldn't a successful dognapping look the exact same from their perspective?
- leni536 8y ago
  I don't think cremation would be on topic if the dog was stolen or lost.
  - krisoft 8y ago
    Wag offered to cover the cremation. The authors don't write that they got the dog's body back. You are just assuming that.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
gnicholas 8y ago
Just looked up Wag's Terms and Conditions: > WAG!’S SERVICES MAY BE USED BY YOU TO REQUEST AND SCHEDULE PET CARE SERVICES WITH PET CARE PROVIDERS, BUT YOU AGREE THAT WAG! HAS NO RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY TO YOU RELATED TO ANY PET CARE SERVICES PROVIDED TO YOU BY PET CARE PROVIDERS OTHER THAN AS EXPRESSLY SET FORTH IN THESE TERMS Obviously this does not excuse Wag's behavior here. They should obviously have given the owners information about the walker so they can find out what happened and bring suit against him/her if appropriate. But it's not surprising Wag forces customers to disclaim liability here. I'd guess that we'd need to see several of these incidents in a short period before the backlash gets strong enough for Wag to modify the liability waiver. Hopefully they'll change how they handle cases like these just based on the justifiable outrage (assuming the author is fairly describing what happened) from this one case.
usr1987 8y ago
You should never be a dog owner. If you can't be there for them, you do not have them. I feel sorry for the dog, not you!
- mial 8y ago
  Yes. Also this > Sara and I will welcoming a new puppy from the same breeder in February—Rory Just go and get one from a shelter instead of encouraging animal breeding which is an unethical practice [0] [0] https://www.peta.org/issues/animal-companion-issues/pet-trade/breeders/ https://www.peta.org/issues/animal-companion-issues/pet-trad...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - senderista 8y ago
    By the same logic, no one should have biological children as long as there are children in need of adoption. I think that's actually a defensible position, but it's a pretty extreme one nonetheless.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  Nobody can provide 24/7 care, so I hope your judgement is that nobody should be a dog owner. Otherwise you're just being a judgmental jerk.
  - black-tea 8y ago
    You should have enough time to take the thing out of your house a couple of times a day.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      Maybe you do! But you also want the dog to get a walk in the middle of the workday.
- on_and_off 8y ago
nurettin 8y ago
Family has a dog. Family's dog needed a walk. There is a dog walking service called Wag. Family hires unidentified walker through Wag. Dog dies. Wag doesn't care and doesn't want to be held accountable. Family announces incident on Facebook. First world problems.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  that's not what "first world problems" means. That's for people making a big deal about trivial problems. This isn't trivial, it's terrible.
  - Antifragile1 8y ago
    A dead dog is trivial in most parts of the world.
  - warp_factor 8y ago
    Why I agree this is terrible, you might want to reconsider your comment also. Pets are a luxury for well-off people. It is in no way a necessity of life like food, or a basic shelter.
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      what's your point? I'm aware of that, but the "first world problems" meme exists to point the finger at people who have so few real problems that they make a big fuss about trivial inconveniences (Starbucks ran out of skimmed milk so you had to use semi-skimmed, best blow it up on twitter). You're supporting a reduction where anything beyond "I'm dying" is a first world problem. Grief at the loss of a pet is not a problem reserved for those who are so privileged that they have lost all sense of proportion. Poor people get sad when their pets die too, but poor people don't generally express the extreme emotional fragility that "first world problems"-havers do, because they have actual problems to be concerned with.
      - warp_factor 8y ago
black-tea 8y ago
So people are paying to get their dogs walked now? What is going on? We're supposed to be working less, not more.
jopsen 8y ago
To be fair aren't most dog walkers paid extremely little? (Below minimum wage even) Many of these services like uber are effective means to underpay people. It has upsides too, such as people having a job (beats having no job). But I'm not surprised the walker didn't want to confront the client. Clients are very unlikely to be calm reasonable people in this situation.
- computerex 8y ago
  What's your point? You seem to be defending the walker when all we know is that a dog was killed under the watch of this walker. How is the walker's low wage relevant to this discussion? Just because they get a low wage doesn't give them a right to kill dogs?
  - jopsen 8y ago
    I think I'm trying to suggest that people who walk dogs for a living might have a hard time -- and, thus, we should show them compassion. We could also pay people a living wage -- but showing compassion and understanding is cheaper. (hints of sarcasm may occur)
- horatiocain 8y ago
  > To be fair aren't most dog walkers paid extremely little? (Below minimum wage even) IDK what your source is on this one but the last time I got one it cost like $40 for a person to walk my dog and leave a little paper note that they pooped.
  - jopsen 8y ago
    https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Wag-Salaries-E1201565.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Wag-Salaries-E1201565.htm This was just a generic guess..
tmsh 8y ago
Maybe if enough people cc the LA DA office they will investigate these complaints listed here and investigate. Just saying. It sounds like they’re violating a lot of laws. https://twitter.com/p10q/status/1086188664563163136?s=21 https://twitter.com/p10q/status/1086188664563163136?s=21
rb666 8y ago
So incredibly sad, and disgusting behavior by Wag.
bibinou 8y ago
mirror / archive: http://archive.fo/nPkP9 http://archive.fo/nPkP9
sathishmanohar 8y ago
I feel really sorry that this happened but I am absolutely scared for the future because the next stop is babysitting apps that doesn't give a damn about users
vectorEQ 8y ago
im just wondering why get a dog if you don't have time for it. seems cruel in itself. a lot of people get dogs and can't walk them or have actual time for them, yet they say they are like family or kids.... i'm sure you do have time for them though :/
- mav3rick 8y ago
  Why have babies if you are calling a babysitter ? Things happen, parents need to go to adult events etc.
- on_and_off 8y ago
  Because people want a god even if they don't want/can't make enough space in their life to take care of it ?
jwilk 8y ago
Archived copy that works with JS disabled: https://archive.ph/nPkP9 https://archive.ph/nPkP9
d357r0y3r 8y ago
I'll get in any car with any stranger with Uber, no questions asked. I would never trust a stranger to walk my dog.
michaelmrose 8y ago
Has wag or a rep actually responded to this? https://www.facebook.com/WagWalking/ https://www.facebook.com/WagWalking/
hema_n 8y ago
How rudely they responded.
duggan 8y ago
Not the first time Wag has made the news for mishandling (and killing) pets[1][2]. [1]: https://nypost.com/2018/05/14/embattled-dog-walking-app-loses-yet-another-dog/ https://nypost.com/2018/05/14/embattled-dog-walking-app-lose... [2]: https://www.ajc.com/news/national/pet-dies-after-dog-walker-error/KbTHksxT6VuUdjXaFmySYJ/ https://www.ajc.com/news/national/pet-dies-after-dog-walker-...
dustincnj79 8y ago
I agree losing a pet is like losing a family member and in certain circumstances much worse. I have had many losses in my life including family members best friends who have died in front of me as well as pets who have died from illness or old age. However never have I lost a pet through using a device that is supposed to make something easier for a pet owner to accomplish a set goal like walk a dog. I am not sure what this device is or why it was being used, if it was out of necessity or laziness. However regardless of either situation I agree and believe that a company that produced this product should show overwhelming support for the family that lost the dog and do whatever it is they can do to make it right. Since this company manufactures products for pets they need to take a stand showing how important animals are in there mission statement as well as their actions after this incident. Imagine how frustrated and pissed off people get when drug manufacturers raise prices on necessary drug just increase their profit margin. I believe this is both immoral and inhumane however people do have an option of where they will purchase their pet needs from and likely they will not choose a company that is not show a sense of compassion for the species they are creating products for. It would be a huge blunder on their image not take such a strong stance as stated in the comments above. Just like people not all pets mean the same thing 2 the same people. However when you do find a best friend in a four-legged creature there is nothing that differentiates them from other members of your family in my opinion. My dog was not only my best friend but he had helped me through many issues that my family had abandoned me on. Therefore when my dog passed away from cancer around the same time I had end-stage renal failure I felt a sense of relief that both myself as well as my best would likely die around the same time because for me there was no life without my dog. However unfortunately I did get better and my dog did not which I cannot hold anybody accountable for but I did suffer from severe depression and anxiety greater than any I have ever suffered from losing a fellow human being maybe that makes me a monster but that is honestly how I felt. To me a life is a life whether it is your dog your family a cat or any other animal. Not one species has more of a right to live then any other. I do understand that not everybody has the same experience or thinks the same way as I do in this situation or many others people often have conflicting morals or points of view which prove to be based on a specific person's experience , individuality and morality which another individual also commented below. What I do know for sure is that when given the choice of supporting a company or no longer supporting a company in effect boycotting them that should only be done when the company does not stand behind their product or the species they are manufacturing products for.
whistlerbrk 8y ago
We had a nightmare story with Wag. My sister's dog was being walked by a new walker through Wag. The sitter brought our dog to a nearby fenced-in handball court and let him off leash, which he was not supposed to do. Her dog went to retrieve a ball that was stuck between the concrete padding and a chain link fence and in so doing severed several arteries in his paw. The handball court looked, no joke, like a multiple murder scene. Dogs have 7 arteries iirc through their paws and so there was blood - everywhere. I know this because I happened to have left work early and was eating dinner with my family nearby when my sister, away at work, gave me a frantic phone call that the walker called, freaking out, that her dog hurt himself and 911 refused to pick him up. I ran to my car as far as I could, drove down to this park, wrapped up his paw, carried him into the car, and drove, breaking every light to the animal hospital. Along the way NYPD pulled me over and upon finding out what was going on, proceeded to escort us to the hospital, clearing the way (shout out to the 88th). If I wasn't home, I'm not sure her dog would have lived. He needed several days in the hospital, blood transfusions and minor surgery. The walker could not have handled it poorer, he was hyperventiliating, completely freaking out, and couldn't get control of himself. I was nice to him, gave him water, calmed him down, but jeez he was a mess. No training, no proper incident response. Don't use Wag.
dustincnj79 8y ago
I myself would only entrust my pet to someone I would equally entrust my child to and it wouldn't be from someone or service purchased on the internet or whatever means it was saught out without meeting the individual first and requesting a background check of said individual. I feel sorry for the owner of the pet but they also need to do their due diligence.
Siemens 8y ago
Sounds like the dog was kidnapped to be sold for a profit.
Delete-Prod-Log 8y ago
We had a similar incident with ROVER !! A dog damaged our property and the owner said they'll pay for it. Owner came and picked up the dog. When we contacted ROVER to ask who was the owner and if we can have a phone number, ROVER SAID WE CANNOT GIVE YOU THEIR DETAILS. ALL WE CAN DO IS GIVE 1st NAME. THEY WOULDN't EVEN TAKE A COURTESY TO CALL THE OWNER AND EXPLAIN THE SITUATION!!
ubermonkey 8y ago
So, Wag is behaving appallingly here, but holy COW I would never trust this kind of effectively anonymous service with my pets. I'm fine hiring a rideshare, but for things that involve actual trust and stewardship of your precious personal items when you're not around, it's FAR FAR BETTER to find an actual human you can deal with consistently, and build a relationship with. A somewhat lower-stakes (and older) version of this is hiring a cleaning/housekeeping service like Merry Maids instead of an actual human. Sure, maybe they're insured and bonded and have background checks and all that, but it still seems riskier to me than finding an actual human who does that work, and who comes recommended by a friend or colleague. This is even more true of someone you'd trust your pets with.
old_but_gold 8y ago
Can't believe you naive people who put your trust in apps and these types of services. The responsibility is entirely yours. You have to understand what responsibility means.
iamnotadogowner 8y ago
Dogs are not people, people who have dogs have a responsibility... it annoys me, as it does with children when it comes to teachers and daycare, that abdication of this responsibility is largely monetary and comes with little consideration. You cannot tell me that an app is the only way out of these things. Try any number of normal human situations like paying a friend or neighbor you trust. The dogs should be looked after, but you should also not be exploiting people who are worse off than yourself, for your own personal, convenient, cheap abdication of responsibility. (If you can't pay a friend or neighbor, possibly you are asking too much for too little)
hessproject 8y ago
I stopped using Wag due to their terrible customer service. I had an incident where a walker, despite explicit instructions, did not put my young puppy (~6 months) back in her crate and left her free in the apartment unsupervised. The walker report card said "I saw you said to crate her but she looked thirsty so I left her out!". I called several times where they said "we tried to contact the walker but couldn't so we can't help you". So I had to leave work early and still came home to a torn up couch and plenty of chewed up plastic that had to be surgically removed by a vet. Wag compensated for this by trying to offer me a "5 dollar credit for your next walk!"
Pica_soO 8y ago
Well, surprise, cheap-labor, treated often worse then dogs, does not care about your emotional life-partner replacement Labrador. Lesson learned - dont treat your fellow men aka Labradorlabour, less then your fellow labrador? Oh, or just have a complete melt down.
antisthenes 8y ago
Well, I never knew what Wag was before this, but I guess I won't be using them in the future.
michaelmrose 8y ago
Public response from wag https://wagwalking.com/daily/an-open-letter-to-the-wag-community?fbclid=IwAR0V5Dsk_PJR0Jeg_hMsbxe9POtpTxlhD03_S4zbxRe5Fx-IGr_YMRxsPFk https://wagwalking.com/daily/an-open-letter-to-the-wag-commu... In particular >Separately, we’ve taken a close look at one of our standard processes when paying a claim. In the rare instance when there’s an incident in which we need to work with the pet parents to make sure their needs are addressed, we’ve required them to sign an agreement — a common practice in the business world. It was so routine for us, in fact, that we didn’t pause to see if it made sense for every situation... How about admitting that trying to make you doing the right thing conditional on them agreeing to be legally gagged was a horrifically morally repugnant way to handle the situations. There is no situation where such an agreement is beneficial to society and as such should be wholly illegal in all possible cases.

775 points by griffinmb 8y ago

I actively block any/all facebook domains for privacy reasons, is this mirrored elsewhere? The 'web' link here in HN is not showing anything useful.

nbrempel 8y ago
https://www.outline.com/AtNgH3 https://www.outline.com/AtNgH3
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
r2ut3u 8y ago
https://telegra.ph/Wag-Incident-01-18 https://telegra.ph/Wag-Incident-01-18
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
crazysim 8y ago
You don't happen to keep a copy of Tor Browser around do you? Just toss it in there.
gjs278 8y ago
nobody should have to commit extra effort to your endeavor. i’ll sum it up for you. the dog is dead. thanks for letting us know about your facebook policy.

idontpost 8y ago

Incredibly stupid decision to respond this way by Wag. How bad to you have to be at PR to screw this up? It's not hard. Liability in the case of harmed pets is extremely limited, so you just pay it all and apologize profusely. There's no way the bad press will be worth saving a couple thousand maximum. Absolute idiots.

wyqydsyq 8y ago
How to sink your own company in 1 easy step
celestialcheese 8y ago
Seriously. It should have been the easiest decision in the world for them - a persons' dog is more important than most other humans to most dog owners, yet the law treats dogs as nothing more than property. Pay up and grovel to these people. In-action doesn't make these things go away. EDIT: just read the non-disclosure section. I understand the impulse to do that, but it's a MUCH better gamble to just kill the story with boundless kindness.
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  > a persons' dog is more important than most other humans to most dog owners, yet the law treats dogs as nothing more than property Something I've always found particularly infuriating is how police dogs are considered officers and often carries a worse punishment than attacking an actual police officer. Not because I am upset that the dogs are being protected, but that the police basically can shoot other people's dogs but nobody can touch their dogs. Jesus I am just going off on tangents tonight. I need to take a break for a bit.
  - berti 8y ago
    This made me really mad last year: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/108562071/police-shoot-family-dog-while-searching-for-wanted-man-in-nelson https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/108562071/police-shoot-fami... TL;DR police looking for somebody went to the wrong address, shot the family dog because it "attacked" a police dog (which was "unharmed by the incident"), and casually told the owners on their way out the door that their dog had died.
    - ajmurmann 8y ago
      Well, police training in the US takes on average 19 weeks, whereas in Germany it takes at least 130 weeks (https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_7709638 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_7709638). It takes 12-14 month to become a cosmetologist...

King-Aaron 8y ago

This makes my blood boil.

james_s_tayler 8y ago

This is mildly fascinating. Though not entirely unexpected. A quick Google for "pet sitting dog died" turns up a number of these stories. It seems a number of them are through these dog sitting services like Wag or Rover. Here's an interesting one I found not through a dog sitting service but just a roommate that had been asked to sit the dog while the owner was away. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/t7kv7/currently_dog_sitting_for_roommatedog_was_just/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/t7kv7/currently_... It must be awful for everyone involved. I suspect it's nothing unique to dog sitting services but that it occurs with a certain (albeit low) frequency as a phenomenon but that it's showing up through dog sitting services because there is a (1) a paper trail of the transaction and (2) a stable, visible entity on which to lay the blame. In the pre-sharing economy days this still happened. Only you vetted the sitter first and so you feel less justified blaming them because on some level you know you signed off on them. You also couldn't really go public and say "14 year old Jenny from Ashmore killed my dog" because you can't make a common enemy out of her and while people will feel for both of you, it's not actionable information for anyone. It's fascinating what phenomenon our society is making visible through new structures made possible by technology. It's awful for all involved to have this happen.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
I have to say that the problem is accountability. With this Wag incident, it appears the person selected through the platform was not the person who was caring for the pet. When I select someone to care for my pet, I know who they are, and can use my own signals to determine if they’re trustworthy and responsible. Wag doesn’t care, they’re just out to “crush it” (cost of business), and the contractor doesn’t care because it’s just another crap minimum wage job. Stop trusting platforms and acting shocked when the trust model breaks down. They are not designed for safety or trust, but to skim as much volume as possible from transaction flow.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  It definitely seems they could and need to do more to tighten up the accountability on the platform. No doubt about that. I don't know that it's accurate to say the contractor doesn't care. If they were a psychopath I could agree with that, but most people have had the experience of having either a pet, friend or relative die and know how deeply it affects people emotionally and to know you were responsible for that would likely generate a strong, negative visceral reaction. Edit: Platforms don't kill dogs; people do. Stop trusting people. Actually this is the part that fascinates me. On some level people expect things to never go wrong. Yet things going "wrong" is kind of the default. It's extremely hard to engineer a situation in which no one ever experiences a negative outcome. To the extent that you can attribute a cause to an outcome, you do. Infact, it's not at all clear whether the frequency of dogs dying while being sat by pet sitters is higher on platforms or higher when not through platforms. You'd actually have to do quite a lengthy, expensive analysis to compute the truth value of that. What can likely agree on is that we want the most safe and convenient system. I'm fascinated by thinking about the various trade-offs made when organizing a system one way vs. another. Are we trading more convenience for less safety? Or are we actually getting both more convenience AND more safety, but also increased observability is skewing our perception of the risk such that we think we have got a less safe system when in fact the opposite might be true? I don't have the answers. But damnit it's important to attempt to look at things the right way in an attempt to compute that actual reality.

yegle 8y ago

This happened recently: Wag! dog walker charged with animal cruelty; customers concerned about industry background checks http://www.ktvu.com/news/wag-dog-walker-charged-with-animal-cruelty-customers-concerned-about-industry-background-checks http://www.ktvu.com/news/wag-dog-walker-charged-with-animal-... EDIT: and the settlement letter sent from Wag: https://www.scribd.com/document/397139013/SNews-Copie19010815010 https://www.scribd.com/document/397139013/SNews-Copie1901081...

defap 8y ago
Wow. The walker kicks and whips the dog until it vomits blood and Wag offers a refund and a $100 credit as settlement. Who in the world wants Wag credits after an experience like that. If Wag wants to buy these folks’ silence, shouldn’t they at least make a non-insulting offer?
- warent 8y ago
  This is terrifying behavior both on part of the walker and Wag. I don't blame Wag for having occasionally sketchy immoral actors that don't care about animals--that's essentially impossible to entirely prevent, especially as they continue scaling. However, their responses to these issues are extremely concerning and do not indicate a company that's managed well.
  - ataturk 8y ago
    You're starting to see what all these shitty tech companies have in common. None of them are about the subject matter or thing, they're about making fast money. Who the hell beats up on a dog if they're a paid dog walker? WTF?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- philwelch 8y ago
  If that was my pet, I might settle for the opportunity to kick and whip each and every cofounder until they vomit blood.

azhenley 8y ago

I hope they get a lawyer and keep us posted with updates.

celestialcheese 8y ago
The best they could hope for is compensation for lost/damaged property. It's messed up considering the human/dog bond, but AFAIK there isn't much they can do legally. If this gets picked up in the news cycles tomorrow that'll be FAR more damaging.

baroffoos 8y ago

There is obviously fault to be attributed to the walker by lying about what had happened but I think its worth thinking about how many animals are killed by cars on a regular basis. We probably all know someone whos pets were killed by cars and the local wildlife is regularly splattered across the roads. I think we need to seriously slow down the speed of our roads to avoid killing so many pets and endangered wildlife. Its possible the walker was doing nothing terribly wrong and the dog was hit and then the walker panicked and made some wrong choices in communication.

theonemind 8y ago
I really wish people would internalize that auto accidents rank pretty highly as a cause of death, and that we could all but make it disappear by just paying attention and putting safety first. A lot of people will do reckless things routinely to save 15% or 20% of the time off of a trip, and can't stand to pay attention to the road. We should really treat it like the dangerous activity it is. When I sit down to drive, I usually remind myself that I just want to get to the other side in one piece.
dahdum 8y ago
My thought is that the text from the walker saying the dog was home safe wasn’t the actual person who took the dog. In that case the vetted person subcontracted to someone else, and perhaps didn’t know the dog had died at the time of the text.
- benatkin 8y ago
  This sounds likely to me. Maybe someone at Wag even suspects this happened but thinks it's better if Wag doesn't know about it.
usaphp 8y ago
> I think we need to seriously slow down the speed of our roads to avoid killing so many pets and endangered wildlife. You don’t need to drive fast to kill a dog running under your car. Even 20mph is enough to seriously injure a dog. Speed limit is not the problem here. Maybe auto pilot will fix the reaction time for the car needed to stop before the accident occurs

ravenstine 8y ago

I was going to reply with a reply about this being "statistically bound to happen", until I read this: > If we wanted to be compensated we had to agree not to tell anyone what happened, we could not leave any negative reviews, we could not make posts on social media, we could not hold Wag or the walker responsible, and only then would Wag reimburse us for Winnie’s cremation. When we responded that we would not sign the agreement, we were told that the agreement would remain available in case we changed our minds. The next day, we received an email stating that the agreement was now “null and void.” What assholes. (Wag) All these gig economy apps are super shady.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
Wag are jerkoffs it seems, but it's still 'statistically likely to happen'. Accidents happen in all things, so I think it should boil down mostly to whatever the reality is there. ... though Wag has shown some bad form obviously.
- Fomite 8y ago
  Given it's statistically bound to happen, Wag should have been able to anticipate this in a way that was not , if not the worst approach, arguably pretty close.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    I'm not defending Wag in the least.
  - swish_bob 8y ago
    A cursory google indicates it's not even that uncommon. There appear to be quite a few "Wag killed my dog" stories going back a number of years.
baseballMan 8y ago
I feel like part of why they're shady is because some of the people that partake in them are shady. It's relatively easy to get accepted to them (especially services like this).

sammycdubs 8y ago

This is a fantastic way to completely destroy your business. What a naive way to try and cover for a lack of investment in safety. My heart breaks for that dog and her family. Absolutely unbelievable.

gjs278 8y ago

if you are so busy that you need uber to walk your dog, maybe don’t buy one

ValleyOfTheMtns 8y ago
I dropped my 2 year old son at day care this morning. Should I have not had a child if I can't look after him all day, every day?
- chuinard 8y ago
  Not really the same comparison. That human will eventually be able to take care of itself and do a lot more for this world than the dog ever will. Pets don't always make sense, and I tend to agree with parent. Or maybe Wag should just connect you one-time with someone reliable in your area. It seems stupid to have strangers all the time with your dog. As the top comment mentioned, people used to just get someone reliable nearby, but the tech has eliminated the need for social interaction and communication.
  - quickthrower2 8y ago
    So don't own a dog unless you can take them for a walk every day without fail for the next 15 years without using a dog sitter / walker.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- gjs278 8y ago
  maybe dude. you can ask your kid in 20 years if you want. make ridiculous comments, get ridiculous responses. you obviously know a kid is not a dog. a dog is a piece of property, that’s why the police can literally shoot it and nobody goes to jail.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

damm 8y ago

I think this is the problem with social media / networking... it used to be when I was a young kid that if someone wanted t heir dog walked ... you would find someone in your neighborhood that you knew. Now we use online services and trust people blindly... As far as the person who lost their dog; I am sorry. I know I did not cause the harm; but it's the only thing I can say. As a pet owner I would be mortified. I also don't trust anyone with my pets (and they don't trust anyone). So it works out.

swayvil 8y ago
People are weirdly alone these days, their faces always in a screen. When you gotta trust somebody, blindly appears to be the only option.
randycupertino 8y ago
> Now we use online services and trust people blindly... It's also so shockingly to create a fake profile and hire people off of reddit slavelabour to write you good reviews. And meanwhile the pet owners hiring randos off Wag to walk their dogs feel like they did their due diligence to vet these gig workers by scrolling through the reviews and selecting the highest rated person.

azhenley 8y ago

Having just got a puppy less than two weeks ago, this is terrifying. I can’t imagine the feeling of helplessness and shock that they must have felt.

oh_sigh 8y ago
My suggestion is that it is okay to use wag or rover, but treat the walkers as nothing more than strangers that you hand your dog over to, until you develop trust via another method.
jarfil 8y ago
If you get ten more, at some point you realize that death happens, and all you can do is care the best you can for them... then get a new one. Of course this doesn't change the fact that Wag requiring an NDA in order to take responsibility, is a total insult.
runarberg 8y ago
Two weeks is hardly enough time to know your dog, and yet your bond is already really strong. Your bond will most likely strengthen exponentially over the next year or two. So the feeling is probably worse then you can imagine.

Judgmentality 8y ago

I admittedly wasn't a huge fan of Wag ever because it always seemed like taking the lowest available bidder to walk your dog (instead of someone who truly loves dogs and has years of experience training them), but I'm curious how much of an influence Softbank has been since their investment. Everybody talks about how Softbank is the smartest money in Silicon Valley. Obviously time will tell, but I feel like Softbank is actually the dumbest money and just has more cash to throw around than anyone else. That said, this is really an unnecessary tangent to what is truly a horrible incident and I grieve for the dog owners.

james_s_tayler 8y ago
To expand a little on your first point - the market of people who truly love dogs, or love them enough to think of walking them to earn money outside of the Uber for X economy, is probably tiny. Most people just have regular jobs and/or don't need the money that much and/or don't love dogs that much. You can scale the access to being a dog walker but you can't scale the "I give a shit about dogsness". Maybe the sharing economy model is just a poor one in certain cases?
gnulinux 8y ago
Haha a little off topic but I'm curious. I work in a Softbank invested startup (not Wag). Could you elaborate about Softbank being the most silly part? Is it silly in this case, or in general about companies Softbank invests in?
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  I'm just unimpressed by their investments, and their ridiculously large sums of money thrown into companies which may not need it. I worked at a Softbank company before, and while the fundraise was heralded as a brilliant move at the time the few in the know realize that the company likely would have shut down had Softbank not put up their ridiculously large sum of money (the public and media still love this company and knows nothing of this). Obviously this is just my opinion on their investment strategy and time will tell - they make money or they don't. But I have insider information that at least one of their bigger deals is definitely going to fail.

dbg31415 8y ago

I went on a few dates with a girl who was a walker for Wag. She had just moved to the town I'm from, and she was between jobs. She had a background as veterinary assistant, was great with my dogs, and seemed over qualified for the work. One day she was upset and I asked her why. She said it was because Wag had terminated her employment and deleted her profile, with over 100 high reviews. (She had been very proud of the number of perfect reviews she had gotten.) She said it was because she called animal control on one of the clients. At first, I was like, "Holy hell, don't narc on your customers... no wonder they banned you... anyone who pays for a dog walker would surely be a good dog owner..." But then she showed me the pictures of what was clearly an puppy mill. My friend was only there to walk one or two of the dogs, the dogs that were used for photos, and there were 20+ other dogs locked in cages. She did the humane thing, documented the issues, reported it to Wag... Wag did nothing, didn't even bother to move her to a different client, or block her from being sent back to that client. So on like the third visit, she escalated it to animal control. Naturally the client got mad and complained to Wag, and that's when Wag fired my friend. But... seems like the right thing to do in that situation. I saw these pictures on her phone, dogs that looked so sad. Penned up in cages where they could barely turn around, and all very pregnant. Anyone with a heart would have done what my friend did. And anyone working as a dog walker should have a heart. Wag is a business, they only care about the bottom line. It's not a service I would ever use for my own dogs. Edit: Went from +7 to -2 pretty quick. Hmm, maybe Wag PR is listening in?

matte_black 8y ago
HN has been getting a lot of coordinated down votes lately.
- gaius 8y ago
  You will notice it always coincides with when the techbros on the West Coast wake up.
  - matte_black 8y ago
    I feel like people don’t just downvote you once and move on, I feel that they go into your whole history and just downvote you as much as they can to wound your reputation, then they tell their friends. Sickening.

ezoe 8y ago

I was more surprised that service like Wag exists.

i_am_nomad 8y ago
San Francisco was at one point inundated with their “Finally, an app for me to pee!” billboards and signs.
- metildaa 8y ago
  What was that, a bathroom rental service? Sounds like profiteering off basic bodily functions, in a way that was previously uncommon & often socially unacceptable.
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    It's Wag, a service that matches you with available dog walkers. The pee-ers in question were pets.
    - mikey_p 8y ago
      That said, there is actually an app for finding and paying to use a restroom: https://www.good2go.global/index.html https://www.good2go.global/index.html

matz1 8y ago

If he care the dog so much, the question is why is he trusting it to some stranger ?

_tulpa 8y ago
Because trust in strangers is one of the things Wag (and Uber et al) are supposed to provide when you pay them.
setr 8y ago
Most interaction in life eventually boil down to trusting in strangers (that you pay). Your kids? Schools, daycares, after-school programs, schooltrips, babysitting; let them do anything on their own? All stranger interactions. At most you get transitive trust. But that doesn’t amount to much. No, the main reason we’re able to sustain this model is that we believe in two big functions: 1. Most people operate nuetrally, if not well. 2. We have a strong deterrent for the biggest misbehaviors/risks by strangers, through government reprecussion. You want to not rely on trusting strangers at all? I’m not sure you can do that except by exiting any major population, and returning to reliance on small, close-knit communities, and strong family-oriented relationships (eg first, second and third generations of family living in the same small circle). But thats a far more substantive change than I think you’re imagining.
- matz1 8y ago
  Its not that you should not trust anyone. If I trust my dog to someone, then I have to accept that there are risk that the dog my die horribly. Likewise, if you trust your dog to me, then you better be ready to accept the risk that your dog might die.
  - _tulpa 8y ago
    Then you just find a random stranger and don’t bother paying for a service which ostensibly exists partly to guarantee some level of trust.
    - deleted 8y ago

Johnny555 8y ago

I've never heard of Wag, but my wife signed up to be a pet sitter for a competing site Rover and they never did any evaluation or background check. She signed up for an account, uploaded a photo of herself and our dog, and within a few days, she started getting petsitting requests.

Fins 8y ago

Seems to be something that, sadly, is to be expected from this generation of SV and SV-like companies that believe than any problem (usually a very First-World problem) can be solved with technology, and all the bad things, and negative externalities, can and should ber swept under the rug on the way to a billion dollar exit.

philpem 8y ago
What you've described sounds like SV (but not just SV) "Techbro" culture to me...
- Fins 8y ago
  Exactly that. Move fast, break things, and pretend it's a good thing. Obviously not an SV-only thing, but the culture in SV glorifies it instead of making it something you should be ashamed of.
warp_factor 8y ago
You are perfectly right, all of this is a result of the SV techbro culture of growing at all cost.

fanzhang 8y ago

The Streisand effect strikes again. This is what happens when the legal department has no customer empathy, and to these lawyers, everything is a nail to their hammer of a contract. Some people mentioned that Wag should have offered more and demanded less -- absolutely! But think about if Wag even said "sorry this happened, that's all we can say for your terrible loss" even without a compensation offer and without an insulting NDA. It probably wouldn't have pushed the owner to post this and for it to end up on HN -- and now the world knows. I honestly believe Wag and Rover and other large companies that offer pet walking services should put up a very high liability bond for pet injury -- on the order of $10K or more. That way they have skin in the game to vet their walkers better. Most owners value their dogs above that, and that incentive is the only way to get these corporations to listen.

crowbahr 8y ago
Perhaps have the walkers be bonded as well? Even if it's 1k that's a pretty serious amount of money to lose, but low enough a barrier of entry that you still have people making a go at it. Obviously it gets returned to you when you close your Wag Walker account.
- thatoneuser 8y ago
  I don't think you understand how little these gig apps pay. 1k deposit would exclude a very large percentage of the workers. And frankly - who in the hell in their right mind would PAY a company a grand so start working for them? That's sketchy af.
  - astura 8y ago
    You're right, but maybe that's the point? You're excluding people who are just desperate for money but keeping the people who want to build (or already own) a pet care business.
    - arkades 8y ago
      It’s dog walking, not artisanal mango cultivation. The vast majority of people picking up unskilled labor gigs through apps are just trying to make a buck. It’s almost the entire source of the app’s labor pool. And it’s not an inherently bad trait.

crispytx 8y ago

That's the problem with lawyers and administrators. Wag should have just ignored their lawyers and did the right thing. It's pretty easy to see what happened here, the executives/administrators/lawyers at Wag are cowards, and were too afraid to compensate these poor people without some sort of legal agreement covering their asses.

issa 8y ago

I realize this wasn't the point of the story, and I'm so sorry this happened to anyone's dog. But please do not buy dogs from breeders when there are plenty of amazing dogs waiting to be rescued at shelters.

crowbahr 8y ago
While you're correct do note that not everyone can handle or wants to go through the pain of training a shelter dog. A dog you've raised from 8 weeks old is very different than a dog someone else has already abused and abandoned. Even if they're only 6 months old the habits have been learned and they're hard to break. Young puppies go instantly from shelters for that reason, and few people want to adopt a pit bull with behavior problems.
- eropple 8y ago
  Yup. Both our dogs are shelter dogs and we love 'em, but in the newest dog's case--he's probably around three, we've had him for about six months--there are enough issues that a lot of people wouldn't want to deal with some people just couldn't, while still being very good caretakers of better-adjusted dogs. In ours's case: he's not a barker and he's incredibly gentle, but he's both dumb as a post (not the shelter-dog problem, and also usually just hilarious) and extremely timid (that one is) to the point of frustration. Speak excitedly? He'll slowly sink to the floor and look worried. Tape a cable to the floor with gaff tape? He won't go over it[0]--probably because he'd experienced an invisible fence, we think. Move a chair to the other side of the living room? He sits in the corner and quietly freaks out for two hours. Leave after such a traumatic furniture adjustment? You might come home and he's nervous-chewed something. (Like, to this point, five pairs of my shoes. I am literally bankrolling Nike by my re-purchases of Air Force 1's. It doesn't help that now he's figured out how to open the doors that don't latch in our house--we're doomed, I tell you. Doomed.) He's a great dog. But we knew going into it that dealing with his issues would take some effort, and there definitely are people who could be enriched by having a dog (they're great!) but don't have the capacity to deal with even a relatively minor case like ours. The downside to this sort of generosity of the benefit of the doubt, of course, is that then there are people who can't hack it and who create more shelter dogs. I don't have a good solution for that, of course. But my intuition is more good is created than bad. [0] - His pathfinding is just not good. He'll go the entire way around the house to avoid walking over a scary black tape line. He'll also squeeze under tables, chairs, benches, etc. to avoid innocuous spaces or hop over the couch to avoid going around it. And this dog is a mess of Labrador, Staffordshire, and German Shepherd, with legs like a greyhound--watching him accordion on down to squeeze under a foot-high bench is hilarious.

ncr100 8y ago

Trust is not bought or rightly earned through 5 stars. Our technology is being used to perpetuate tragedies. We have no ethics organisations, for encouraging ethical usage of Computer Science.

A4ET8a8uTh0 8y ago

I can relate and no doubt fellow dog owners do as well. Random death of a family member can make a sane man mad. The author seems to handle it better than I would have. For a company that seemingly specializes in this service, it should be, if not a dead blow, then a very painful lesson. That said. Experian was never punished for what they did. Maybe if they killed a puppy, people would care.

ajmurmann 8y ago

The most outrageous part to be always are the NDAs attached to settlements. Those should be illegal. It should not be for the two parties to decide to withhold information from the public. Usually it's the public who has an interest in this information becoming widely available and not the person agreeing to the NDA.

busterarm 8y ago
If it weren't for NDAs, most settlements would never happen. Lawyers and court fees are a bargain compared to extremely bad press.

thomasec 8y ago

We had a similar (but thankfully, less serious) thing happen with Rover. We booked a dog sitter for 4 days with a woman named "Leslie". When we showed up to "Leslie's" place, the lady who we met did not match the person in the photo, and barely spoke any english. We were on our way to the airport, so I really didn't have a choice at that point but to leave our dog (I realize now I should have done more vetting, or met this individual in-person ahead of time, but the person I booked - Leslie - had dozens of positive reviews). After dropping off our dog, we received extremely vague updates/text messages over the next few days, and no photos. Things like - "Your dog is doing great", "he is behaving so well", etc... Whenever I asked for a photo, they would say they'd send one the next day. Needless to say, it became obvious that whoever was watching our dog was not the person we were communicating with. Thankfully, our dog doesn't have special medication, or a specific diet that we needed to monitor. Who knows what would have happened if there was an emergency, and we needed to get in touch with one another. These services like Wag and Rover have literally one job, and that is to make sure you trust the individuals watching your pet. The response from Rover was completely thoughtless, and it was clear they were going to do nothing to investigate the situation. The fact that they don't care that people like this woman who clearly has some sort of questionable scheme going on just shows how little they care about protecting their customer's pets.

sizzle 8y ago
Why not put an IP camera on your pooch and front yard for the peace of mind and to verify they are actually doing their job?
- bestnameever 8y ago
  I would imagine that placing a camera on a dog in this situation would be pretty illegal in a lot of states, especially if their dog is being card for in another person's home.
  - dustincnj79 8y ago
    Yes most likely it would be illegal in a private residence however in many situations if the individual was advertising doggy day care then the individuals who's pets attend would have the right to record without the consent of the individual unless there was some specific statement in the terms and conditions stating that would be an inappropriate action on their premises which then should lead an individual to reconsider who watches their dog. Would you allow your child to be taken care of by a daycare business would not allow parental surveillance or supervision during any point of the day I would hope not and if in either situation you sign something stating you would not be allowed to surveil your pet or child and you continue using that a service then unfortunately the liability I believe is then on the consumer. Remember the old adage buyer beware. There are some pretty sick human beings in this world who often pray on the weak or innocent and it is the pet owners or parents responsibility make sure that their pet or child is not being abused especially when they are not able to verbally express when atrocities take place!

wewake 8y ago

Are we going to link FB posts on HackerNews now?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

krisoft 8y ago

How do the owners know the dog is dead and not stolen? Wouldn't a successful dognapping look the exact same from their perspective?

leni536 8y ago
I don't think cremation would be on topic if the dog was stolen or lost.
- krisoft 8y ago
  Wag offered to cover the cremation. The authors don't write that they got the dog's body back. You are just assuming that.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

gnicholas 8y ago

Just looked up Wag's Terms and Conditions: > WAG!’S SERVICES MAY BE USED BY YOU TO REQUEST AND SCHEDULE PET CARE SERVICES WITH PET CARE PROVIDERS, BUT YOU AGREE THAT WAG! HAS NO RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY TO YOU RELATED TO ANY PET CARE SERVICES PROVIDED TO YOU BY PET CARE PROVIDERS OTHER THAN AS EXPRESSLY SET FORTH IN THESE TERMS Obviously this does not excuse Wag's behavior here. They should obviously have given the owners information about the walker so they can find out what happened and bring suit against him/her if appropriate. But it's not surprising Wag forces customers to disclaim liability here. I'd guess that we'd need to see several of these incidents in a short period before the backlash gets strong enough for Wag to modify the liability waiver. Hopefully they'll change how they handle cases like these just based on the justifiable outrage (assuming the author is fairly describing what happened) from this one case.

usr1987 8y ago

You should never be a dog owner. If you can't be there for them, you do not have them. I feel sorry for the dog, not you!

mial 8y ago
Yes. Also this > Sara and I will welcoming a new puppy from the same breeder in February—Rory Just go and get one from a shelter instead of encouraging animal breeding which is an unethical practice [0] [0] https://www.peta.org/issues/animal-companion-issues/pet-trade/breeders/ https://www.peta.org/issues/animal-companion-issues/pet-trad...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- senderista 8y ago
  By the same logic, no one should have biological children as long as there are children in need of adoption. I think that's actually a defensible position, but it's a pretty extreme one nonetheless.
Dylan16807 8y ago
Nobody can provide 24/7 care, so I hope your judgement is that nobody should be a dog owner. Otherwise you're just being a judgmental jerk.
- black-tea 8y ago
  You should have enough time to take the thing out of your house a couple of times a day.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    Maybe you do! But you also want the dog to get a walk in the middle of the workday.
on_and_off 8y ago

nurettin 8y ago

Family has a dog. Family's dog needed a walk. There is a dog walking service called Wag. Family hires unidentified walker through Wag. Dog dies. Wag doesn't care and doesn't want to be held accountable. Family announces incident on Facebook. First world problems.

beaconstudios 8y ago
that's not what "first world problems" means. That's for people making a big deal about trivial problems. This isn't trivial, it's terrible.
- Antifragile1 8y ago
  A dead dog is trivial in most parts of the world.
- warp_factor 8y ago
  Why I agree this is terrible, you might want to reconsider your comment also. Pets are a luxury for well-off people. It is in no way a necessity of life like food, or a basic shelter.
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    what's your point? I'm aware of that, but the "first world problems" meme exists to point the finger at people who have so few real problems that they make a big fuss about trivial inconveniences (Starbucks ran out of skimmed milk so you had to use semi-skimmed, best blow it up on twitter). You're supporting a reduction where anything beyond "I'm dying" is a first world problem. Grief at the loss of a pet is not a problem reserved for those who are so privileged that they have lost all sense of proportion. Poor people get sad when their pets die too, but poor people don't generally express the extreme emotional fragility that "first world problems"-havers do, because they have actual problems to be concerned with.
    - warp_factor 8y ago

black-tea 8y ago

So people are paying to get their dogs walked now? What is going on? We're supposed to be working less, not more.

jopsen 8y ago

To be fair aren't most dog walkers paid extremely little? (Below minimum wage even) Many of these services like uber are effective means to underpay people. It has upsides too, such as people having a job (beats having no job). But I'm not surprised the walker didn't want to confront the client. Clients are very unlikely to be calm reasonable people in this situation.

computerex 8y ago
What's your point? You seem to be defending the walker when all we know is that a dog was killed under the watch of this walker. How is the walker's low wage relevant to this discussion? Just because they get a low wage doesn't give them a right to kill dogs?
- jopsen 8y ago
  I think I'm trying to suggest that people who walk dogs for a living might have a hard time -- and, thus, we should show them compassion. We could also pay people a living wage -- but showing compassion and understanding is cheaper. (hints of sarcasm may occur)
horatiocain 8y ago
> To be fair aren't most dog walkers paid extremely little? (Below minimum wage even) IDK what your source is on this one but the last time I got one it cost like $40 for a person to walk my dog and leave a little paper note that they pooped.
- jopsen 8y ago
  https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Wag-Salaries-E1201565.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Wag-Salaries-E1201565.htm This was just a generic guess..

tmsh 8y ago

Maybe if enough people cc the LA DA office they will investigate these complaints listed here and investigate. Just saying. It sounds like they’re violating a lot of laws. https://twitter.com/p10q/status/1086188664563163136?s=21 https://twitter.com/p10q/status/1086188664563163136?s=21

rb666 8y ago

So incredibly sad, and disgusting behavior by Wag.

bibinou 8y ago

mirror / archive: http://archive.fo/nPkP9 http://archive.fo/nPkP9

sathishmanohar 8y ago

I feel really sorry that this happened but I am absolutely scared for the future because the next stop is babysitting apps that doesn't give a damn about users

vectorEQ 8y ago

im just wondering why get a dog if you don't have time for it. seems cruel in itself. a lot of people get dogs and can't walk them or have actual time for them, yet they say they are like family or kids.... i'm sure you do have time for them though :/

mav3rick 8y ago
Why have babies if you are calling a babysitter ? Things happen, parents need to go to adult events etc.
on_and_off 8y ago
Because people want a god even if they don't want/can't make enough space in their life to take care of it ?

jwilk 8y ago

Archived copy that works with JS disabled: https://archive.ph/nPkP9 https://archive.ph/nPkP9

d357r0y3r 8y ago

I'll get in any car with any stranger with Uber, no questions asked. I would never trust a stranger to walk my dog.

michaelmrose 8y ago

Has wag or a rep actually responded to this? https://www.facebook.com/WagWalking/ https://www.facebook.com/WagWalking/

hema_n 8y ago

How rudely they responded.

duggan 8y ago

Not the first time Wag has made the news for mishandling (and killing) pets[1][2]. [1]: https://nypost.com/2018/05/14/embattled-dog-walking-app-loses-yet-another-dog/ https://nypost.com/2018/05/14/embattled-dog-walking-app-lose... [2]: https://www.ajc.com/news/national/pet-dies-after-dog-walker-error/KbTHksxT6VuUdjXaFmySYJ/ https://www.ajc.com/news/national/pet-dies-after-dog-walker-...

dustincnj79 8y ago

I agree losing a pet is like losing a family member and in certain circumstances much worse. I have had many losses in my life including family members best friends who have died in front of me as well as pets who have died from illness or old age. However never have I lost a pet through using a device that is supposed to make something easier for a pet owner to accomplish a set goal like walk a dog. I am not sure what this device is or why it was being used, if it was out of necessity or laziness. However regardless of either situation I agree and believe that a company that produced this product should show overwhelming support for the family that lost the dog and do whatever it is they can do to make it right. Since this company manufactures products for pets they need to take a stand showing how important animals are in there mission statement as well as their actions after this incident. Imagine how frustrated and pissed off people get when drug manufacturers raise prices on necessary drug just increase their profit margin. I believe this is both immoral and inhumane however people do have an option of where they will purchase their pet needs from and likely they will not choose a company that is not show a sense of compassion for the species they are creating products for. It would be a huge blunder on their image not take such a strong stance as stated in the comments above. Just like people not all pets mean the same thing 2 the same people. However when you do find a best friend in a four-legged creature there is nothing that differentiates them from other members of your family in my opinion. My dog was not only my best friend but he had helped me through many issues that my family had abandoned me on. Therefore when my dog passed away from cancer around the same time I had end-stage renal failure I felt a sense of relief that both myself as well as my best would likely die around the same time because for me there was no life without my dog. However unfortunately I did get better and my dog did not which I cannot hold anybody accountable for but I did suffer from severe depression and anxiety greater than any I have ever suffered from losing a fellow human being maybe that makes me a monster but that is honestly how I felt. To me a life is a life whether it is your dog your family a cat or any other animal. Not one species has more of a right to live then any other. I do understand that not everybody has the same experience or thinks the same way as I do in this situation or many others people often have conflicting morals or points of view which prove to be based on a specific person's experience , individuality and morality which another individual also commented below. What I do know for sure is that when given the choice of supporting a company or no longer supporting a company in effect boycotting them that should only be done when the company does not stand behind their product or the species they are manufacturing products for.

whistlerbrk 8y ago

We had a nightmare story with Wag. My sister's dog was being walked by a new walker through Wag. The sitter brought our dog to a nearby fenced-in handball court and let him off leash, which he was not supposed to do. Her dog went to retrieve a ball that was stuck between the concrete padding and a chain link fence and in so doing severed several arteries in his paw. The handball court looked, no joke, like a multiple murder scene. Dogs have 7 arteries iirc through their paws and so there was blood - everywhere. I know this because I happened to have left work early and was eating dinner with my family nearby when my sister, away at work, gave me a frantic phone call that the walker called, freaking out, that her dog hurt himself and 911 refused to pick him up. I ran to my car as far as I could, drove down to this park, wrapped up his paw, carried him into the car, and drove, breaking every light to the animal hospital. Along the way NYPD pulled me over and upon finding out what was going on, proceeded to escort us to the hospital, clearing the way (shout out to the 88th). If I wasn't home, I'm not sure her dog would have lived. He needed several days in the hospital, blood transfusions and minor surgery. The walker could not have handled it poorer, he was hyperventiliating, completely freaking out, and couldn't get control of himself. I was nice to him, gave him water, calmed him down, but jeez he was a mess. No training, no proper incident response. Don't use Wag.

dustincnj79 8y ago

I myself would only entrust my pet to someone I would equally entrust my child to and it wouldn't be from someone or service purchased on the internet or whatever means it was saught out without meeting the individual first and requesting a background check of said individual. I feel sorry for the owner of the pet but they also need to do their due diligence.

Siemens 8y ago

Sounds like the dog was kidnapped to be sold for a profit.

Delete-Prod-Log 8y ago

We had a similar incident with ROVER !! A dog damaged our property and the owner said they'll pay for it. Owner came and picked up the dog. When we contacted ROVER to ask who was the owner and if we can have a phone number, ROVER SAID WE CANNOT GIVE YOU THEIR DETAILS. ALL WE CAN DO IS GIVE 1st NAME. THEY WOULDN't EVEN TAKE A COURTESY TO CALL THE OWNER AND EXPLAIN THE SITUATION!!

ubermonkey 8y ago

So, Wag is behaving appallingly here, but holy COW I would never trust this kind of effectively anonymous service with my pets. I'm fine hiring a rideshare, but for things that involve actual trust and stewardship of your precious personal items when you're not around, it's FAR FAR BETTER to find an actual human you can deal with consistently, and build a relationship with. A somewhat lower-stakes (and older) version of this is hiring a cleaning/housekeeping service like Merry Maids instead of an actual human. Sure, maybe they're insured and bonded and have background checks and all that, but it still seems riskier to me than finding an actual human who does that work, and who comes recommended by a friend or colleague. This is even more true of someone you'd trust your pets with.

old_but_gold 8y ago

Can't believe you naive people who put your trust in apps and these types of services. The responsibility is entirely yours. You have to understand what responsibility means.

iamnotadogowner 8y ago

Dogs are not people, people who have dogs have a responsibility... it annoys me, as it does with children when it comes to teachers and daycare, that abdication of this responsibility is largely monetary and comes with little consideration. You cannot tell me that an app is the only way out of these things. Try any number of normal human situations like paying a friend or neighbor you trust. The dogs should be looked after, but you should also not be exploiting people who are worse off than yourself, for your own personal, convenient, cheap abdication of responsibility. (If you can't pay a friend or neighbor, possibly you are asking too much for too little)

hessproject 8y ago

I stopped using Wag due to their terrible customer service. I had an incident where a walker, despite explicit instructions, did not put my young puppy (~6 months) back in her crate and left her free in the apartment unsupervised. The walker report card said "I saw you said to crate her but she looked thirsty so I left her out!". I called several times where they said "we tried to contact the walker but couldn't so we can't help you". So I had to leave work early and still came home to a torn up couch and plenty of chewed up plastic that had to be surgically removed by a vet. Wag compensated for this by trying to offer me a "5 dollar credit for your next walk!"

Pica_soO 8y ago

Well, surprise, cheap-labor, treated often worse then dogs, does not care about your emotional life-partner replacement Labrador. Lesson learned - dont treat your fellow men aka Labradorlabour, less then your fellow labrador? Oh, or just have a complete melt down.

antisthenes 8y ago

Well, I never knew what Wag was before this, but I guess I won't be using them in the future.

michaelmrose 8y ago

Public response from wag https://wagwalking.com/daily/an-open-letter-to-the-wag-community?fbclid=IwAR0V5Dsk_PJR0Jeg_hMsbxe9POtpTxlhD03_S4zbxRe5Fx-IGr_YMRxsPFk https://wagwalking.com/daily/an-open-letter-to-the-wag-commu... In particular >Separately, we’ve taken a close look at one of our standard processes when paying a claim. In the rare instance when there’s an incident in which we need to work with the pet parents to make sure their needs are addressed, we’ve required them to sign an agreement — a common practice in the business world. It was so routine for us, in fact, that we didn’t pause to see if it made sense for every situation... How about admitting that trying to make you doing the right thing conditional on them agreeing to be legally gagged was a horrifically morally repugnant way to handle the situations. There is no situation where such an agreement is beneficial to society and as such should be wholly illegal in all possible cases.