Hi everyone, I hope you are all having great experiences surrounded by lots of furry lovely pals. This is my first time posting and I would like to know your opinion. It is a long story but I hope you can make it to the end, please.
4 days ago my husband and I finished our first 21-day stay taking care of three beautiful, giant Bernese Mountain dogs + three cats with whom we made a wonderful connection. Everything was going “well,” in fact we left the house with a great feeling of victory and pride in having had a nice experience, even though there were details that were not optimal from the beginning, but that, good or bad, we knew how to overcome so that there was no reason to ruin the experience.
We agreed with the owner to arrive a day early so that she could show us the dynamics with the 3 dogs, the 3 cats, the house and her lots of plants. That day the owner was very busy, and there was only time to walk the dogs and see how to feed them. That night she let us stay in the basement, which she regularly uses for Airbnb visitors.
The next morning, before she left, I asked her to show me the top floor to see where we would be staying and that’s when we found out that we had to sleep with all the pets. On top of that, there wasn’t a single space to put our stuff. I asked her if we could sleep in the basement and she said no, because the pets were used to having company. This was never mentioned in the welcome guide (to sleep with them) and it will surprise us a lot. We slept in her room but the cats didn´t let us sleep, so they had to sleep on the other room.
Also I asked her if we could keep our stuff in the basement because there wasn’t room available for us and she said yes, that we could use the whole house without a problem.
All of this is important to mention in order to understand the end of the story.
Once she left, we had to vacuum the couches and cushions to feel comfortable sitting there. the smell was bad and they were not clean at all, the vacuum cleaner container ended up full of hair and dirt.
When we checked the fridge to make a bigger space, we found a lot of rotten food from the year 2022, 2023 even with mold, also rotten fruits and vegetables that we had to throw away.
The next day the hot water stopped running and the kitchen sink got clogged. We told her immediately and her response was not pleasant, she said that this was very strange, that it had never happened before, as if we had caused it. At least she was responsible and called some technicians to show up the next day.
The breakdowns were serious, it took 2 days or so for the workers to be able to fix them. They had to replace several parts of the heater that was from the 90s. On the other hand, the pipes were so clogged with garbage that they needed special tools and many hours to unclog it.
Once this was sorted out, everything went very well. The dogs got used to us and we got into a pretty good routine, really, I have no complaints about pets.
Another day, with a rather lascivious tone in her message, she told us that a neighbor had written to her that the dogs were barking, asking why we had them outside in so much heat (it was cloudy that day). This started to give me red signals, because her tone and her way of communicating through whatsapp was kind of aggressive. That morning, after feeding them, and when the weather was mild, we went out to the garden to play with them. Suddenly they saw a squirrel and started barking but it didn’t take long. Also, every day at 11 am, the cleaning robot is activated and the dogs run away to the garden because they don’t like the noise (she knows that). We explained this to her and she calmed down, but again, her way of saying things was too demanding and uneducated.
For mental health we tried to forget these events and carry on as normal, although I do not deny that her messages got me down. When we met her in person she gave us the image of being a kind, smiling woman and apparently very relaxed and mature, but her messages showed us a very different face, a dark one. Every day we sent her multiple messages and photos of the dogs to avoid controversy, many of the messages were never answered.
I must mention that during our stay we spent a lot of time cleaning and taking care of the house (more than I thought we would have to do), we worked remotely but we planned very well our agenda to have everything covered, at 10 pm we were in bed feeling exhausted and had almost no time for ourselves.
Anyway, here comes the hard part: The owner arrived a day earlier than expected. We told her it was no problem, we would change the bed so she could sleep well in her room and we would go to the basement. We had to speed up and we cleaned her bedroom, the bathroom, the office, the living room, the couches, the kitchen, we cut the grass, we put a lavender spray on the 3 dogs so they would smell nice, and we bought her a bottle of wine as a welcome. It didn’t take us long to have the house tidy, the next morning it looked like a war field, all the things were on the couches, the table, the kitchen, the floor.
On our last day we went for a walk with her and the 3 dogs to say goodbye while in the evening we cleaned the basement, vacuumed everything and washed the bathroom. We even put the bedding in the washing machine to make it easier for her the next day.
Anyway, our international trip was delayed and we had not internet until late in the night and in that moment we started receiving absurd messages from this woman telling us that we had left the place in terrible conditions, that we were dirty and disrespectful, that she had spent several hours scrubbing every corner with bleach. My jaw dropped just reading the meaningless messages. I told her that I was very surprised by her change of mood but especially by the things she was saying, we had left in very good conditions and a few hours later we received the worst messages, fortunately I took videos of the things in the fridge and how the house was. She never gave us credit for everything we did for the house, for the pets and for her.
For three days in a row she sent us very harassing messages and it really drained our energy. in one she was saying that we shouldn´t have spent time in the basement when she agreed with that when I asked to leave our stuffs there, I don´t understand her. She accused us to stained her kitchen for preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner. How?? Unfortunately the good experience we had had turned dark and miserable.
In the review for her we were thinking of saying very positive things but with these messages I don’t know what to do. Would you write a short and concise honest review of what happened or would you rather leave it without comments?
We will never accept taking care of 6 animals in such a small house. I would not tolerate the level of disorganization and dirt in which the HO left the house, nor the fact that they did not prepare enough space for us to live comfortably for three weeks or that they forced us to sleep with the animals. We are frequent travelers and fortunately we do not use this platform as a way of life, we did sign in to create positive and different experiences because we love dogs and cats but sadly, it turned out to be a horror story.
