Paw Pals Pet Sitting

Mary was so awesome. We had to travel for my grad school and we found her service online two nights before. She was quick to respond and even drove over for a meet & greet the night I initially called her. She spent time getting to know us and our dog so that he would be comfortable with her the day she came back to watch him. We left on a Friday and actually came back the same day although we were planning to return on Sunday. Our dog was so happy and cheerful when we got back. Mary even left a note for us each time she visited giving us updates on our dog. We could tell our dog was relaxed and appreciated the belly rubs and attention:) we have already booked Paw Pals for a weeklong service in December because I’ll be traveling back to school with the family.
So excited to finally have found a reliable dog care service in our area!

I can’t speak to the quality of the walks because we never got that far…
We just moved to the area from DC two dogs. We made it clear to every dog walker service that we interviewed with that we needed to be on a situational case basis, like we wouldn’t know until the morning of that we would need someone to walk them. The dogs have a doggie door at home so the main purpose for the walks is for exercise and mental stimulation.
Mary from PawPals was very nice! She was super flexible in accommodating our moving schedule and you can tell she runs a very organized, efficient business.
The first red flag: Mary mentioned she knew our landlords very well as she used to walk their dog. I got the feeling they were semi-​close. This made me uncomfortable.
The second flag: Although Mary was very professional and had all of her t’s crossed on paper, the personable factor wasn’t there for us. She mentioned that she already knew the house so there wasn’t any reason to view the home to see where the dogs spent the most of their time.
The final flag: We texted her this morning to ask for a last minute walk. She promptly replied that there would be an additional $ 10 charge for a «last minute call» and the walk would only be 15 minutes, at best. To say the least, I was a bit disappointed as we made it very clear upfront all of our services would be last minute, situational and «on-​call» and there was never any mention of any additional fee for this service and she had seemed more than agreeable to our situational condition.
I’m mostly upset about the time we wasted going over all the paperwork (about 45 minutes), the keys we now have to go pick up and the level of trust we instilled in this company that wasn’t warranted, especially after our initial flags. Mary did text back and asked if she could walk the dogs after 3pm but we decided to decline since we’ve already have a backup plan.

I was a bit nervous when I recently hired Paw Pals to visit my elderly kitty while we went away for the weekend. I hate leaving my cat with new people, but I hate boarding my cat more; he gets really stressed. But Mary (the sitter /​owner) quickly put my mind at ease with how well organized she was.
When she came over for the pre-​trip interview, she asked a lot of questions and took thorough notes. I felt so much better after that meeting. The «Visit Reports» I received upon returning home were also quite detailed, and she responded quickly to some last-​minute requests that I emailed her after leaving.
I believe her high level of organization and attention to detail ranks her way above other pet sitters I’ve hired (but alas, forgotten to review) in the past.

Paw Pals is a well-​run, organized, and caring business. They thought of details and questions that demonstrated just how much they wanted to do a good job of caring for my pets the same way I would. My dog and cat seemed to enjoy the visits. I was very impressed that they wanted me to contact them when I got home from my trip so they knew my animals would be taken care of in case there was an unexpected travel delay!