Doggie Latchkey, LLC

Doggie Latchkey’s pet sitting mission is to provide pet owners with a safe and secure alternative to boarding and kennels. No matter how cute the overnight facilities might look, it still isn’t home. Our passion for keeping pets in their own environment and daily routines is the motivation for this pet sitting business.

The Result: One dog with kidney disease being given incorrect medication (Chemotherapy). Another dog being given the wrong dosage of Chemotherapy. Disrupted Wedding/Honeymoon. Large vet bills being covered by their insurance. Doggie Latchkey refusing to issue a full refund.
The Experience: We hired Doggie Latchkey since they had great reviews, were allegedly professionals, and were fully insured for any issues that may occur. We were going to be gone for one week for our Wedding/Honeymoon in Mexico. The initial dog sitter came the night before and was quite good after we showed her exactly what to do with medications and feeding. We gave her emergency contacts and an extremely organized, color-coded feeding/pee/medication schedule. We were told she would be there every day and night for the first half of the week, and the second half of the week she would be back at nights/mornings for the feeding and medications. What happened is that we were told without any warning that the second nanny would be taking over completely from the initial nanny. This is someone we’ve never met and hadn’t personally shown how to take care of our three dogs, all of which have medical issues. We tried to facetime her the first morning she was working to make sure she didn’t have any questions about the routine, however she seemed frustrated we were calling and seemed as if she wanted to get off the phone as quickly as possible and told us to call the owner of the company, Denise. We only called her at the request of the nanny and asked why the sudden change in nanny’s while we were talking to her. She ended up being quite rude to my wife and suggested that if we have someone, we know that could take care of our dogs that we should call them. On our last day in Mexico, we received a phone call from the nanny saying she gave Chemotherapy to the dog with Kidney Disease rather than the one that needed Chemo. The sitter was not prepared for this situation, did not know about the Pet Poison Hotline, nor had a way to pay for the $60 fee for a case number from them that the vet required. We had to coordinate the point help line and the emergency vets from Mexico. The nanny got to the vet 1.5 hours later rather than the 20 minutes it usually takes to drive there. We had to book the first flights we could tend to our dogs. Upon talking to the vet, it turns out this was the second time they had been in contact with here. She had apparently given too much Chemo to our dog that was prescribed it and was seeking advice 3 days prior. Same story from our regular vet, but she kept mixing up names on the call, so we are unsure if she knew which dog was which. When we arrived home the house smelled horribly. Upon reviewing our cameras around the house, the second sitter didn’t follow the pee schedule we laid out (which was needed due to the frequent urination of our dog with Kidney disease), so the dogs would wake up earlier than her and pee and poop around the house. The nanny picked up poop but didn’t clean up the pee. They insurance was a pleasure to work with. They covered all the vet expenses that we racked up, however informed us they can’t reimburse us for the pet sitting expenses, that’s on Doggie Latchkey’s end. After trying to request a refund on a poor service on a call with their Director of Operations we were only met with equally poor customer service, we were told they were willing to refund $450 of the $1304 we were charged claiming they did an adequate job of taking care of our dogs, until Denise the owner called us again and was extremely nice about it and was quite remorseful and so mortified about what happened. We were issued the Full Refund of $1,304. In the end Denise came through and acted professional in her communication, and willing to work with their customers to make things right.

Doggie Latchkey, LLC is the best alternative to boarding your dog or cat. Our "Blue Ribbon pet sitting" services are designed to keep your pets happy at home in their own environment while you are away on business travel, vacation or just working long hours. We are FULLY bonded and insured and a family owned and operated local business serving the communities of Oakland and Wayne county. We...