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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

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.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    The problem is I can’t tell which ones care, and those are the only ones I’d want to do business with.
    - james_s_tayler 8y ago
      I can respect that. You want to maximize the likelihood the dog survives. I call this "The Hard Problem of Delineation". You can't delineate between who will and won't kill your dog no matter what system you use. That's the problem. Though I take your point about the cold, uncaring, capitalist dog walker. Hmmm. Edit: now that I think about your point I can see what you mean. The "sharing economy (Uber for X)" has become a widely known abstraction that people realize they can exploit for monetary gain and thats likely to attract more people walking dogs who wouldn't otherwise care about, be familiar with and/or know how to handle dogs. I agree, at least in principle, that may be a phenomenon that is occurring.
      - masonic 8y ago
        You want to maximize the likelihood the dog survives. Wag, however, has a huge financial incentive for the dog to die even if it could be saved, due to the cost differential between surgery and subsequent care vs. cremation cost.
        james_s_tayler 8y ago
        Well in the case the dog has already been hit and is facing either death or the possibility of salvation by some means then perhaps I might agree that them sweeping our four legged friend under the proverbial rug might be, not necessarily the most moral course of action, but perhaps the most expedient. The comment that you want to maximize the likelihood the dog survives was referring to the point of market entry after you have decided you want someone to sit your dog but haven't yet selected a provider. They certainly don't have an incentive for the dog to die in that case, unless we invoke a conspiracy theory that they actually also run the doggy crematorium and thus win twice on the deal. But that's a mildly absurb prospect.
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
I think it's also consolidation, as dog sitting becomes consolidated in services there is more of a chance that a dog killed during a dog sitting assignment was killed on a dog sitting assignment purchased through a service.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  Yup. That's another way of stating it. That fact gives you observability and that feeds back into your calculus about the safety of such an activity.
magduf 8y ago
>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 Back in the old days, you could hire your neighbor's kid to do jobs like this. These days, no one is having kids, so you don't have any neighborhood kids to hire for odd jobs. Instead, people are all just adopting dogs instead, so we have to have big corporations to take care of them for us, apparently.

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.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  The problem is I can’t tell which ones care, and those are the only ones I’d want to do business with.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    I can respect that. You want to maximize the likelihood the dog survives. I call this "The Hard Problem of Delineation". You can't delineate between who will and won't kill your dog no matter what system you use. That's the problem. Though I take your point about the cold, uncaring, capitalist dog walker. Hmmm. Edit: now that I think about your point I can see what you mean. The "sharing economy (Uber for X)" has become a widely known abstraction that people realize they can exploit for monetary gain and thats likely to attract more people walking dogs who wouldn't otherwise care about, be familiar with and/or know how to handle dogs. I agree, at least in principle, that may be a phenomenon that is occurring.
    - masonic 8y ago
      You want to maximize the likelihood the dog survives. Wag, however, has a huge financial incentive for the dog to die even if it could be saved, due to the cost differential between surgery and subsequent care vs. cremation cost.
      - james_s_tayler 8y ago
        Well in the case the dog has already been hit and is facing either death or the possibility of salvation by some means then perhaps I might agree that them sweeping our four legged friend under the proverbial rug might be, not necessarily the most moral course of action, but perhaps the most expedient. The comment that you want to maximize the likelihood the dog survives was referring to the point of market entry after you have decided you want someone to sit your dog but haven't yet selected a provider. They certainly don't have an incentive for the dog to die in that case, unless we invoke a conspiracy theory that they actually also run the doggy crematorium and thus win twice on the deal. But that's a mildly absurb prospect.

bryanrasmussen 8y ago

I think it's also consolidation, as dog sitting becomes consolidated in services there is more of a chance that a dog killed during a dog sitting assignment was killed on a dog sitting assignment purchased through a service.

james_s_tayler 8y ago
Yup. That's another way of stating it. That fact gives you observability and that feeds back into your calculus about the safety of such an activity.

magduf 8y ago

>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 Back in the old days, you could hire your neighbor's kid to do jobs like this. These days, no one is having kids, so you don't have any neighborhood kids to hire for odd jobs. Instead, people are all just adopting dogs instead, so we have to have big corporations to take care of them for us, apparently.