Christ Yoder
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A Colorado pet owner’s worst nightmare came true when her beloved dog was found dead after being taken into the care of a sitter hired by Wag!, a popular pet walking and grooming app. animals.
Liz Giorgi, co-founder and CEO of start-up soona, 35, was traveling to Kenya with her husband to scatter her father’s ashes on January 5 when she first learned that her dog, Fran, had disappeared.
Credit: provided
Giorgi originally bought the trip for herself and her dad as a Christmas present as he was a big fan of The Lion King and had always wanted to see the African savannah in person. But following her unexpected death in November 2021, she reworked the trip in order to “bring a little [him] in Kenya to honor his memory.
As her regular kennel couldn’t accommodate the new travel dates, Giorgi says she used the Wag! app and was initially pleased with its positive reviews and decent price.
She found a pet sitter who had a five-star rating through the app, dropped Fran and her other dog, Hazel, off with the caregiver, and left for the airport on January 4.
Giorgi explained that she was in the middle of her flight to Kenya when she received a text from her Wag! dog sitter, claiming Fran was “out” and may have “sneaked” or jumped over the fence of the carer’s house.
“We had Fran [for] three years old and she’s never jumped a fence, so I’m skeptical,” Giorgi told In The Know. “There was no home security video, so no way to verify that either.”
The babysitter also said she went looking for Fran but was unable to locate her. Giorgi immediately put the sitter in touch with her best friend, who helped mobilize friends and family to help with the search party from the ground up in Denver.
Meanwhile, Giorgi was still in the air, frantically trying to contact the Wag! the customer support team for instructions on how to proceed.
“I was on the plane so I couldn’t call, so I emailed their customer service,” she told In The Know. “I had an autoresponder 30 minutes later. An official email response didn’t come until the next day, missing critical times when we needed help locating her when she was presumably close to where the walker lost it.
Credit: provided
To Giorgi’s dismay, she also discovered that Wag! had no publicly available resources for a pet owner in his situation.
“No checklist of next steps, no allocation of resources, and no explanation of who my primary point of contact was,” she said.
She spent the next few days distraught and stuck in rural Africa, unable to return home due to reduced flight rates amid the pandemic, trying to contact anyone in Wag! who might be able to provide him with better support.
Giorgi says she contacted the app’s CEO Garrett Smallwood several times, both via Twitter and through his professional network, but says he “ignored requests from our mutual contacts to introduce us”.
Ultimately, after Giorgi “raised the hell out on social media for four straight days,” Wag! hired a dog tracking company to search for Fran, in addition to the dog tracker She had already hired. Although Wag! apparently tempted to shoot them tracker after 48 hours, Giorgi says social media pressure prompted the company to keep its tracker on site for another day.
On January 12, Giorgi share the tragic news on Twitter that her “soul dog” Fran, who had comforted her through the loss of her father, had died.
Giorgi told In The Know the dog was found by a Good Samaritan about half a mile from where she was originally lost. She was reportedly hit by a car.
The computer-generated communication she received from Wag! Following the discovery, says Giorgi, only exacerbated the already painful situation.
Throughout the ordeal, Giorgi says she was never offered an apology, either by Wag’s support team or by Smallwood.
A Wave! The spokesperson told In The Know that the company is “deeply saddened by Fran’s passing”, adding that “our thoughts are with her family”.
“Safety is a top priority at Wag! and every service is provided and supported by the full support of our Trust and Safety team,” the spokesperson continued. “The team worked diligently with Fran’s emergency contact and the animal’s parent, as well as the local community, to find her and bring her home. This tragic incident is still the subject of investigation and the caregiver has been suspended from our platform pending the conclusion of an investigation.
As she awaits more information about what really happened to Fran, Georgi says she hopes her experience can serve as a warning to other pet owners.
“It’s been a nightmare,” Giorgi told In The Know. “Hope this helps someone else avoid Wag.”
Wag, which has been billed as the “Uber for dog walking”, has come under fire for several high-profile incidents involving its service, some of them fatal.
According to the New York Post, the company has lost at least eight dogs in New York City alone since it launched in the Big Apple in 2015. Fortunately, some have been found while others, sadly, have not. summer.
In 2018, a Houston couple spoke out after their dog, Winnie, was hit and killed by a car while out with a walker hired by Wag. The company reportedly asked the couple to sign a nondisclosure agreement before agreeing to pay the $188 to have the dog cremated.
During the same year, another Wag! walker was investigated for animal cruelty after she was filmed carrying a woman’s 8-year-old Yorkie, Bella, home “unresponsive and lame” after a walk. The dog later died.
In a bizarre 2019 incident, a Wag! A dog walker stole a New York couple’s dog with the intention of giving it to someone else. The dog, Benny, was later reunited with his owners, while the walker was arrested and charged with burglary, petty larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.
That same year, a couple filed a lawsuit against Wag, alleging negligence and fraud, after their French bulldog, Burger, was hit and run over by a car in New York City while dating a Wag! walker. Patch.com reported that footage of the incident showed the elderly dog trailing far behind the distracted walker, who was apparently looking at his cell phone when the dog was struck and killed in a crosswalk.
In a 2019 post, Hilary Schneider, CEO of Wag at the time, responded to the public outcry over the aforementioned incidents by writing, “We hear you loud and clear. We have work to do on our side and we are committed to doing it.
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Dog owner‘s beloved pet dies after being entrusted to Wag! pet sitter: “It’s been a nightmare” appeared first on In The Know.
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