Pooch Pals

Normally I hesitate to give any company a one-​star or five-​star rating. However, I feel it’s important for other people to know that this outfit is not equipped to do business. We hired Pooch Pals for their dog walking services to walk our dog, who has some fear issues. We clearly communicated this to them when we first met with Pooch Pals. They seemed up for working with him and were really flexible about when we needed the walks, etc. Things went great for the first two weeks, but then one of the owners went out of town and notified us that someone else would be walking our dog. We met with the guy and were satisfied that he would be fine. But he never showed up to walk our dog, which meant that he was in a crate for over nine hours. On the following Monday, after reassurances that the same dog walker would be available, the other company owner, who we had never met (nor who had met our dog) came to the house to walk him. Our dog was so frightened that he pulled away from the dog walker and ran away. My husband and I both came home from work to look for him. We suspended the search at dark and I went out to look for him again in the morning. I found him huddled under a car on a busy road (part of our regular running route)…his paws were torn up and he was exhausted. He’s since recovered, and we have terminated service with them. But despite repeated requests for them to return the house key, they did not return it, so we changed the locks.
The owner who lost the dog did contact us and was very apologetic about losing the dog. But what bothered us was that they we so disorganized about communicating with us and making sure that there was no disruption in service. Shame on us for placing trust in an outfit that wasn’t ready to take on this kind of responsibility…