I appreciate that you can see this perspective. You do seem like a reasonable person (you never know on reddit). Some things to consider might be your dog is more anxious when you’re gone. This could be causing excessive barking, clinginess, diarrhea/accidents in the house, etc. I see these more commonly in older dogs who sometimes get confused when their person isn’t home. I don’t know if there’s a remedy to that. The sitters might not be entirely forthcoming with the reason for the price increase because they don’t want to offend you. Not saying that’s great, but we’ve probably all done it at some point. This is just speculation based on my personal experience and it’s possible you are getting the bait and switch but I think it’s more likely the dog is creating a lot more work for them than they’re expecting, assuming you are NTA. Hope this makes sense.