Do not use North Jersey Pet Sitters if you wish to come home to your beloved pets alive and well…read more
After using their services for a couple of years, we had begun to trust this team. That was our first mistake.
My family and I went away for a week at the end of June, leaving our five ducks, four chickens, three rabbits, and two cats in their care. You would be forgiven for thinking there might be a partridge in a pear tree somewhere in this review. Thankfully, there isn't--because like some of our actual pets it probably would not survive the end of this write up.
Anyway, back to my review.
After returning home from our trip, tired and exhausted after a week away, were we greeted by our beloved pets? That's right--you guessed it. No, we were not.
We were greeted by overflowing litter boxes, filth all over the enclosures, and empty food and water bowls. By the state of the place and the lethargy of the animals it was pretty clear that the greedy little blighters hadn't simply drunk all their water and gobbled up all their food immediately before we arrived.
So there we were at 12:00 a.m., after a long trip, filling duck ponds, chicken feeders, and rabbit waterers, while also cleaning up the multiple piles of cat feces throughout our house because the litter box was worse than a sewage plant.
We reached out to the owner to find out what on earth had happened and hoped for the best with all our starving and dehydrated animals.
Spoiler alert: one of the rabbits didn't make it.
After multiple vet visits to try to repair the damage caused, he went into gastric paralysis during the night and passed away a few days later. Terrible, I know--but it doesn't end there.
It turns out his bonded mate was pregnant. We can't blame North Jersey Pet Sitters for that part; we were told she was fixed when we adopted her, but it turns out that wasn't true. Due to malnutrition, however, the babies perished, leaving this poor rabbit both a widow and the mother of angel babies in one fell swoop.
North Jersey Pet Sitters swore that this was simply one bad egg. They fired the employee in question, refunded our money, and promised us that they loved animals and had no idea how this could ever have happened.
After having used them for several years, we believed them.
Our second mistake.
We were going away for another week in July. Their supervisor, came to our house to make sure they knew how to care for the animals. After spending an hour walking through our home and promising us the world, we were ready for our trip.
Nothing could go wrong this time, right? Surely, after what happened last time, they would make sure everything was perfect?
Wrong.
When we returned home what did we find? The duck enclosure door had been left open, and one of our girls was missing.
After searching, we found her in the woods with her neck broken.
How could this happen? The obvious answer is that the person who came to check on them left the door open, right?
Not according to North Jersey Pet Sitters.
Maybe a neighborhood kid did it. Maybe a dog did it. I'm concerned that people who claim to care for animals don't realize that dogs lack the opposable thumbs required to operate a latch specifically designed to keep predators out.
Honestly, with the wild stories we were given, I was half expecting them to suggest that some of the gibbons from Turtle Back Zoo had escaped, come to our house, and opened the door. Frankly they should have suggested that, because gibbons have opposable thumbs, so it would have been more believable than their ridiculous dog theory.
Anyway, thanks to these so-called pet sitters, we now have two dead pets and a rabbit with--using the vet's terminology--"mummified" babies stuck inside her.
Who knows? Maybe the silver lining is when she is finally able to birth them we'll have the plot for a new mummy film actually worth watching!
0/10. Would not recommend.
