Random Pet-Sitter Horror Stories (16 items)

• (#1) He Just Wanted To Help

  From Redditor /u/NHMassh*le:

  This dog I was watching got into the garbage when I was sleeping upstairs. Here is what happened (in what I am assuming was chronological order).

  He got into the trash. Ate food. Then felt bad and tried to take the bag outside. The bag gets caught in the doggy door. He’s now trapped inside and can’t puke or poop outside. He does both.

  IT GETS WORSE!

  The dog has a guilt problem and will try to ahem “clean up his messes” by eating them. From what I gathered by the various and several sh*t/vomit mixed combos in the house, he must have done this 6-8 times. It was a vicious cycle...

  I found him hiding in the bathtub, and he didn’t leave for the whole day.
• (#2) Bad Dog, Worse Judgment

  From Redditor /u/prustage:

  Took a friend's dog on a trip to Stonehenge, England - a drive of about 100 miles. When we returned to the car, I dropped my car keys and the dog picked them up in his mouth and ran off across the Salisbury Plain.

  Chased the dog for nearly an hour, then finally found him - without the car keys! Stayed there 'til it was dark following the dog round trying to see where he had dropped or buried them without success. In the end, I had to abandon the car and thumb a lift home (this was before mobile phones). Nice couple drove us 95 of the 100 miles back then just as we were arriving home the dog simultaneously threw up and took a crap on the back seat.

  We were thrown out at that point and walked the rest of the way in the dark. It was about 3:00 am.

  Later, I had to pay to have the car fixed and brought back and got a bill from the nice couple for valeting their car.
• (#3) Did You Agree To Manage A Menagerie?

  From Redditor /u/RecyclableRaccoon:

  My friend had a dozen animals. Her bunnies from hell roamed the basement. Apparently they are huuuuge [biters]. Her free-range budgies [birds] pooped on everything and everyone. Open the closet to get a garbage bag = surprise! It's a sugarglider climbing up your arm. What a cute turtle - ah, my finger! Hey there, little guinea pig! Thanks for peeing on me.

  That was a fun week.
• (#4) Welcome Home!

  From Redditor /u/I-heart-naps:

  My friend was dog sitting for some people for a couple of weeks. The owners came home, and my friend was talking to them about how it went. The dog came up and threw up a bloody tampon right at the feet of the owner. She was absolutely mortified.
• (#5) Get That Dog A Treat

  From Redditor /u/Gogsta_x:

  I was once looking after my grandparents' dog. It was about 2 am and I was about to go to sleep. I climbed into bed and laid there and, after literally a split second, I hear the dog barking. I got up to go tell it to be quiet when it turns out someone was trying to pick the door lock or some sh*t.

  So after some awkward eye contact with this guy, he ran.
• (#6) A Swim In The Mississippi

  From Redditor /u/gretchenrosss:

  I was watching my roommate's dog Penny for the weekend. I remembered him showing me a video of Penny playing in the river, so I walk her over to the river and let her off the leash... and off she goes! Just swims straight in to the middle of the Mississippi River (yeah, I'm an idiot). So I start calling her back to me and she starts heading back, and every time she got 10 feet away, she'd turn around and swim away.

  Finally, I got into the gross city river water and realize the river is full of large sharp, uneven rocks, which is probably why Penny would turn away.

  Dealing with these rocks, I fell fully into the Mississippi River myself. Then a tourist river boat glides by and everyone is gawking at this soaking wet, chubby white girl yelling "Pennnnnny!" at a dog swimming in the middle of the Mississippi..

  We eventually got her out (about a quarter-mile down from where we started).

  Then we took the walk of shame back to my place and had my friend hose us down in the backyard.
• (#7) Poor Boy Just Hates Storms

  From Redditor /u/biochemicalcricket:

  I sat for a family with a rescue lab. When he was adopted he was already named Thunder.... for his pathologic fear of thunder. He was a big boy so they usually medicated him before storms, but my stories are the two mistakes.

  The family hadn't realized the storm was coming so I arrived to a panicked dog charging around shaking. Trying to corral him in the basement where it was quieter lead to a brief reprieve, but then there was a nearby strike. Thunder jumped up and charged up the stairs and headbutted the door hard enough to crack it and force the door open. Poor guy only wanted to be held between the claps.

  The other story also involves the same dog but I was babysitting for their children as well. This time he was medicated accidentally. The mother had misread the paper and given him medication to calm him on the wrong day. This lead to a drugged up pup with no anxiety to keep him moving. I had to separate the kids from him because when they told him to shake he'd slide to the floor trying to be on one paw.
• (#8) The Dogs Weren't Their Only Company

  From Redditor /u/xosomeblonde:

  I was pet sitting and I swear there was someone in the house while I was there.

  The woman told me to just stay in one room, and I never questioned it and only stayed in that part of the house. At one point I heard noises and the dogs were barking at the other half of the house and it was just terrifying! I was on the floor with a knife talking to my boyfriend who was trying to talk me down.

  I was freaked the f*ck out and did two more jobs after that (ones I'd already signed up for) and then never did it again. It really messed with my head and made me feel so unsafe and vulnerable and paranoid.
• (#9) The Bath That Backfired

  From Redditor /u/The_Wolverines_Dad:

  If you give the dog... a bath, in the upstairs bathroom, and you use the pet shampoo, do not let the dog lick any tub water! You'll have explosive diarrhea everywhere later that evening.

  I used two bottles of Clorox kitchen spray and four rolls of paper towels to clean my kitchen.

  Lesson learned!
• (#10) All That Money Just Flew Away

  From Redditor /u/LatestGreatestSadist:

  We had my aunt's thousand-something-dollar Senegal parrot, and my sister took it outside and that lil f*cker flew away. My neighbor saw it in her backyard though and caught it (idk how) and brought it back. I hated that bird though, it was mean.
• (#11) It's Always White Carpet

  From Redditor /u/yairina:

  Parents and I were house sitting two nights ago, had to get up at 5:30 am to get ready for work at 6:30. Weird noises woke me up at 3:30 am; cat puked on white carpet. Thought to myself "I'll just go back to sleep and let my mom discover it when she decides I need to wake up tomorrow" (She's really anti-sleeping in). Realized I had to wake myself up and was responsible for cleaning it up on my own 15 minutes later. By this time the puke had really started to set (it was white carpet). I searched the house to find carpet cleaner, took forever because it's a huge house and it wasn't where you'd expect to find carpet cleaner. Spent more time cleaning it. Tried to go back to sleep but couldn't because the cat spent rest of the night violently clawing at the door to be let back in.
• (#12) Dogs And Ammo Don't Mix

  From Redditor /u/CerinLevel3:

  I'm sitting inside petting one of the two dogs. I notice one is gone and start to have a panic attack, because that's the logical thing to do.

  You see, the dog in question had just gone into heat and I was not going to be at fault for a litter of puppies. She had wandered off into the woods while I was feeding their pigs, apparently.

  Called my mom over to have her help look (I was 15) and she drove around the area. Lo and behold, she found the dog. The dumb [creature] had been hanging out at the nearby gun club, which the owners had no connection to.

  Needless to say I didn't mention this when I got paid.
• (#13) Typical Tom

  From Redditor /u/Rinso365:

  A friend let me and a couple others stay at her apartment for a couple nights during Music Midtown in Atlanta (the apartment was so close you went to it to use the loo). The only condition was that I feed her cat, and that the cat cannot go outdoors. Needless to say my drunk friend Tom left the door open and the cat waltzed on out. It did come back 30 minutes later, and I was glad. Tom didn't even seem to care either way.
• (#14) Do You Not See The Door?

  From Redditor /u/atvrider:

  I've had to take care of some dogs that would sh*t on the floor instead of outside, even though they had a dog door.
• (#15) Who Taught Him That?

  From Redditor /u/ashleighholynn:

  I was looking after a dog that kept [playing] dead. Laying on his back with feet in air, very freaky.
• (#16) Maybe She Prefers Sony

  From Redditor /u/eryant:

  Not quite horrifying. But I was watching some dogs once, live-in though, and was playing Xbox with the fiancé, and this dog probably decided that we weren't paying her enough attention and went and turned the Xbox off.

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