The story of a dog left with a “trusted” sitter when his soldier owner was deployed, only to wind up abandoned and left to die by the sitter in the vehicle he’d stolen has become national news. A horror story and cautionary tale read by pet owners and dog lovers around the world as we all waited for news with diminishing hopes until the worst possible outcome was revealed.

The company Trusted Housesitters which “matched” the sitter and the soldier is cooperating with the police and has put out the usual corporate gibberish.

The sitter, Andrew Jansen is being sought by the police and was last seen apparently in Florida. Jansen didn’t “work” for Trusted Housesitters. Despite the name, THS is not a service but an exchange. Sitters exchange home and pet care for “unique home stays.: As a rule, no money passes hand between the parties.

So neither Jansen, nor the soldier were employed by THS. Both paid for “memberships.” Jansen as a sitter, and the soldier as a pet owner. Possibly a small “booking fee” was paid by either Jansen or the soldier or both. THS only recently started charging the fees and they are dependent on joining/renewal date and tier. It’s not clear what the fee actually covers, and it doesn’t seem to offer added protections for anyone.

What’s not being said in Trusted Housesitter’s statement is that they are in any way responsible for what happened. And maybe they aren’t legally although I would imagine that CEO Matthew Prior must be well aware of the recent US civil court case where a woman raped by an Uber driver brought suit against Uber and was awarded $8.6 million in dollars in damages. The driver didn’t technically work for Uber either, but the ride was booked through the app, and ultimately Uber was found responsible for the driver’s actions.

In the case of Trusted Housesitters homeowners are told to “vet” sitters, who apply to their “listings” but this wording is relatively recent. There aren’t a lot of guidelines offered on how. Sitters in most of the world go through an ID-verification process. In the US there is also a “criminal” background check though it’s unclear at least to most members what this encompasses and what it doesn’t. Convictions? Arrests? Apparently the sitter had many driving charges but it’s not clear if any were criminal or resulted in convictions. Maybe there is a level of convictions that still allows you to “pass” and get your membership? Who knows? If you look at the small print, the company isn’t “responsible” for anything that happens to either party or to the pets.

But wasn’t this Uber’s argument more or less? Drivers are independent operators paid by customers with Uber only taking a small cut acting as a middleman through its platform? Drivers don’t actually work for Uber in the conventional sense in this brave new “sharing” economy. There are ratings and reviews. If customers have issues they can bring them up or complain directly to the company. Similarly, THS has a rating system which if you pay attention to what’s publicly on the forums often involves both homeowners and sitters leaning over backwards to avoid mentioning anything short of the worst offenses lest they be scolded on the forums for being “petty” or receive a scathing public response from the person they reviewed. Homeowners know that writing a bad review could lead other sitters to avoid the site in the future since reviews are a big part of vetting.

I don’t have access to Jansen’s profile, but apparently he had 5-star reviews with no mention of any issues. If he had any problematic sits where homeowners decided not to review, the soldier would have had no way of knowing about them.

 I’ve been a member of THS for years. I signed up in late 2022 as a homeowner. In 2023, I upgraded to a “combined premium” membership allowing me to sit as well. It’s gone well. I’ve enjoyed hosting compassionate competent sitters in my home, and I’ve enjoyed free accommodations in Hudson Valley VRBO-ready homes, cities in the US like San Fransisco and Portland and even one time in a village in the south of France.

For me the “combo” has been a high-value asymmetrical home exchange. My Manhattan catsit  is considered a “highly desirable” one by THS standards. But clearly it doesn’t work out that well for everyone. Many homeowners find it difficult to find “free” sitters willing to stay in suburbs or take care of pets in need of extra care. Sitters vary. Some are part timers like me. Others are fully nomadic, and while most have steady income through remote jobs, passive income, retirement accounts etc, a large subset seem to be more sporadically employed, relying on sits for housing, and out there without a lot of support or resources when things go wrong.

Through the official forum and its feistier Reddit sister, I’ve become aware of numerous THS disasters: Indoor cats escaping through windows or doors never to be seen again. A dog drowned. Was it negligence by the sitter or should the homeowner have had a gate around the pool? We’ll never know because both parties seem to have signed NDAs in the settlement. And there was a story of some sitter who didn’t show up or maybe showed up once and decided not for me and two dogs starved to death. More recently a couple who somehow managed to join through another country so no background check and they burglarized their way through several California homes. Now this.

I get it. There are tens of thousands of sits going on throughout the world all the time. Things are going to go wrong somewhere. Maybe THS’s track record is better than Rovers. I know they’ve had incidents too. But I’m not a user of or sitter for Rover.  I’m feeling dirty somehow for my participation. I need to break my habit of giving helpful advice on the forum. I spent this morning looking up my history in case I said anything at any point to the soldier that could have encouraged him to make the fatal pick. I found that when he looked for help after his initial sitter cancelled just before his deployment, I flagged the thread and suggested that maybe given the circumstances THS could help him. I don’t know if they did or not but he confirmed a second sitter, and now the rest is history and tabloid news, and I wish I’d told him to do something else.

I am currently reading a sci-fi novel set in a future dystopia. The protagonist is a robot-valet who has killed his master for reasons he doesn’t remember or understand. He is programmed to want to be a valet and he seeks further employment hoping he can find something where killing only one master won’t be an issue. It’s an absurd premise because of course there is no acceptable murder quota. Just as there is no acceptable rape quota on Uber. But Uber was still found responsible and this despite taking many different kinds of actions to prevent rapes from happening once it became publicly clear that Uber-rapes were a thing.

It’s not clear that Trusted Housesitters will take any action to make sure that what happened to Maverick won’t happen again ever to any pet under the care of a Trustedhousesitter. It’s not clear what actions they could have taken in this issue, at least not publicly and not yet. 

It looks like the sitter  “passed” a criminal background check and had no problematic reviews had some kind of breakdown and did something terrible.  Some people are reporting the sitter had numerous driving infractions which presumably didn’t go into the report or maybe like murdering one’s employer in the novel I’m reading, didn’t count.

The soldier knew there was a problem when communication abruptly stopped. The soldier took action by getting in touch with his friends to find out what was happening. Police were involved early on.  But there is a lot we don’t know that isn’t public knowledge. What about all of the previous sits. Were there concerns people had that they didn’t tell anyone? Were there reviews not written that should have been? Or maybe there were concerns but the company did nothing.

So far we haven’t heard publicly from Trusted Housesitters CEO, Matthew Prior who is normally hands-on enough to feature himself in videos and post in the THS blog under his name.

Surely, this is a time for some public statements and internal discussions.  There are many changes in policy that might help in the future:

• Videos to help homeowners to better vet sitters.
• A change in norms around what information about sitters is offered to THS and what is shared with homeowners.
• Some kind of crisis line for sitters that they agree to call if they become “afraid” on a sit or think they might be in danger.  (Some reports suggest Jansen was having a mental health crisis.)
• Better tracking of sitter (and homeowner) cancellations and issues beyond the reviews to look for patterns that could indicate issues.
• Post sit assessments that might be kept “private” in case homeowners or sitters have a bad feeling about something but are afraid to put it in a review.
• Checking in with homeowners who don’t write reviews as this often happens when things go wrong but the homeowner is afraid writing a bad review will cause them problems.
• Showing any sits “missing reviews” in a sitter’s history. This is not currently visible to homeowners. A sitter could have ten five star reviews and ten missing reviews, and the homeowner would have no way of knowing this.
• Banning members who’ve had issues before those issues become tragedies.
  
  This particular case of course tugs on our heart strings because the soldier was called away to serve his country and was trying to do the best he could for his dog. This might be an issue beyond THS’s scope, one that local shelters could help with in providing temporary placement for instance. But THS could also take some responsibility, offering for instance, a special program free for military members or people involved in volunteer service who might not be able to run back home at the first sign of trouble, or might be suddenly deplory, or not be able to maintain regular  contact with the sitters. The company could offer extra support for those pet parents including maintaining contact with sitters or even replacing a sitter if there is an issue. THS itself could have even asked for help on the soldiers behalf from local shelters to see if they could arrange fostering until a great sitter could be found. This isn’t  even “altruistic” (a claim the CEO has made about the company on its website). The good publicity would have been a boon for THS, especially needed after they rolled out new fees and faced a backlash. 
  
  I don’t expect any of these changes to happen. The changes that have been happening seem to be geared toward bringing in more dollars quickly. New policies are announced that make things worse while members continue to complain about longstanding issues. Legacy members, including a great number of full-time sitters with consistently excellent reviews are leaving because of new fees and a changing culture. New members with less experience, and sometimes more desperation (housing insecurity in a time of scarcity) are joining.
  
  It’s a story happening in many sectors of the sharing or gig economy even though the non-monetary aspect would seem to place THS in a separate category. Based on some of the advertising, it’s beginning to look less my idea of an “asymmetrical home exchange with cute pets” and more like an ingenious scheme to provide housing for the desperate while they do low- wage sporadic remote work, and both sitters and homeowners pay the company for bringing them together in this wonderful mutually beneficial agreement.
  
  I hope I’m proven wrong soon by a message from the CEO along with announcements of serious changes to make the site  safer for sitters, homeowners and most importantly pets. Not holding my breath.