Hiring a Pet Sitter on Rover or Wag? The Vet Records Gap Nobody Talks About

You found a sitter with 47 reviews, a 4.9 rating, and photos of herself with a golden retriever. You booked her. What you might not realize: Rover doesn't check whether your dog's vaccinations are current, and the platform itself doesn't require any. That part is left to you, your sitter, and your vet's inbox. It's a small gap that most owners never notice until it matters.

What Rover and Wag actually verify

Rover does real screening on the human side. Sitters go through identity checks and a background check, and their profiles carry reviews and history. What Rover doesn't do is confirm that the pets being booked are vaccinated. Its own community answers and terms make this plain: Rover has no vaccination requirement, and it doesn't collect proof. Instead the responsibility is split two ways. The terms ask owners to keep their pets vaccinated as local law requires, and they place the job of checking a pet's vaccination status on the service provider, the sitter. Rover states it won't be liable for anyone's failure to vaccinate.

Wag! is worded more strictly. Its support pages say the platform maintains a vaccination policy and doesn't allow unvaccinated pets to use its services. That's a stronger stance than Rover's on paper, but a written policy isn't the same as document-level verification at every booking, and in practice individual sitters and walkers still tend to be the ones asking for records. The practical takeaway is the same on both platforms: don't assume anyone has checked your dog's shots for you.

This gap is rarely spelled out during the few taps it takes to book, which is part of why widely shared horror stories about bad pet-sitting experiences circulate the way they do. Most of those stories aren't about vaccines specifically, but they share a root: owners assumed the platform was vetting more than it was.

Why the gap matters

The risk runs both directions. A sitter often cares for several dogs across a week, so a pet with a lapsed vaccine can be exposed to others and can expose them in turn. The American Veterinary Medical Association describes kennel cough, the canine infectious respiratory disease complex, as highly contagious, spread through coughing, sneezing, and shared surfaces. Canine influenza spreads easily too, and a dog can be contagious while looking perfectly healthy. Dogs whose routines put them around other dogs are exactly the ones vets flag for Bordetella and, where it's circulating, canine influenza vaccination.

There's a paperwork dimension too. If your dog does get sick and you can't show that core vaccines like rabies were current, a routine situation can get complicated fast, both with the other owner and with any clinic involved. The sitters who've learned this ask for vaccination proof before they accept a booking. When a sitter requests your records, that's a sign they take the job seriously, not a hassle.

What to do before you book

A few minutes of prep closes most of the gap:

• Confirm your dog's vaccinations are current before you book, with attention to Bordetella and canine influenza for any setting where dogs mix.
• Ask the sitter directly whether they request vaccination proof from all clients. A yes is reassuring.
• Read the profile for any stated vaccination policy of their own.
• Make your vet's contact and your dog's records easy for the sitter to reach if something comes up.

What to hand your sitter before drop-off

Proof of vaccination is one piece of a larger handoff. A good sitter also needs your dog's medications, allergies, feeding routine, emergency contacts, and vet details, plus a note on whether they're authorized to seek emergency care. We keep the full checklist in what your dog walker actually needs to know, and for longer trips it's worth pairing that with a written vet treatment authorization so a sitter can actually get your pet treated if you're unreachable.

Wagabond handles the records side of that handoff. You forward vet documents to a per-pet email address, and the app pulls out vaccinations, medications, and weights and tracks expiry dates with color-coded countdowns, so you can see at a glance whether Bordetella is about to lapse before a boarding stay. When you book a sitter, you send a time-limited share link that shows current vaccination status, medications, feeding schedule, emergency contacts, and vet information, and it expires on a schedule you set. You can download Wagabond Pets free on the App Store.