Woman says a Rover sitter took her anxious dog on an hour-long drive without warning — and then the trip ended after 12 hours when the message came that he was gone

A woman on Reddit said a babymoon in Hawaii turned into a nightmare almost as soon as it began after the Rover sitter watching her dogs messaged to say one of them had run away. In a story later collected by r/BestofRedditorUpdates, she wrote that she and her husband had done a meet-and-greet in advance and specifically chose the sitter because she had no other dogs, no roommates, and no children, which felt safer for their anxious little dog, Apollo. But while the couple were in Hawaii, the sitter apparently took both dogs on an hour-long drive to a friend’s house without telling them first, and Apollo disappeared there. The woman wrote that she and her husband turned around and flew home after only about 12 hours into the trip.

The first post makes clear how frantic and painful those first days were. She said Apollo was extremely small, extremely anxious, and missing in freezing temperatures. She also said the family threw themselves into the search right away with neon posters, flyers, social media posts, and outreach to shelters and vets. Rover refunded them, but she wrote that the financial hit still ran into the thousands once the trip was abandoned, and that the stress was especially brutal because she was 23 weeks pregnant and trying to keep herself eating and drinking while fearing the worst about her dog.

What made the story hit so hard was that the sitter’s decision seemed to undercut the whole reason they chose her. The woman wrote that she had even asked in advance about the sitter’s Christmas plans and was never told the dogs would be taken anywhere else. In comments quoted in the BORU post, she said the sitter seemed apologetic and was helping search, and that their other dog appeared completely fine, which made the whole situation even more confusing. But she still could not understand why anyone would load an anxious dog into a crate and take him on a long, unplanned drive after the owners had clearly tried to create the calmest stay possible.

Then came the update people were desperate for. Two weeks after the original post, she returned with a short message saying Apollo was home after 16 long days. In the follow-up, she wrote that he had a long recovery ahead but that the vet said he was stable. That was enough to completely change the emotional arc of the thread, because until then the story had read like one of those pet-loss posts people almost dread opening.

The BORU comments reflect just how relieved people were. A huge share of the reaction centered on one thing: readers were scanning for confirmation that the dog survived before they even let themselves read the rest. Others focused on how reckless they thought the sitter’s behavior was, especially because Rover sitters in the thread said taking an anxious dog on an unauthorized trip in a kennel he was not used to was nowhere near normal practice. The general mood was that this was not a harmless judgment call gone wrong. It was a catastrophic decision that could easily have ended much worse.

What makes the story stick is that it combines two kinds of betrayal at once. There is the emotional betrayal of trusting someone with a pet you describe like a family member, and then there is the practical betrayal of learning the sitter changed the whole setup without your knowledge. Apollo did come home, which is what gives the thread its relief. But the relief does not really erase the core of the story: a couple tried to do everything right for an anxious dog, and one unapproved decision still blew the whole thing apart.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1qiorri/rover_sitter_lost_my_dog/