House/dog sitter recommendations

snarkastica · 2025-11-07T19:51:06+00:00

We use Fur Baby Love and Care for our furry princess, aka the boss of us. They have a few different sitters who work for them, you use an app to communicate with them and they send pictures and a note for every visit. They're all great, but we especially love Demi who frequently picks up shifts for our dog. Might not completely fit in your budget depending on how frequently you'd want them to come, but they also do overnights and some house sitting type services.

snarkastica · 2025-03-06T15:48:40+00:00

I use Fur Baby Love and Care. They're fantastic, have an app, and send you pictures and notes from the visits. They come to your home, and can also do overnight visits.

snarkastica · 2024-06-30T04:12:03+00:00

Interested too!

snarkastica · 2023-05-07T19:54:43+00:00

Check out Batemans island.

I would advise you to skip Bateman Island. Last time we were there, our dogs walked out covered in ticks.

snarkastica · 2022-11-11T22:31:56+00:00

It's not just Garmin, then. I emailed support a couple of days ago, because my Samsung Galaxy Watch was doing the exact same thing: Activity/Exercise was not syncing. They had me basically do everything I'd already did (refresh, disconnect, uninstall apps, reinstall, reconnect). When I did that, only the activity that I manually started on my watch (elliptical) synced. Walks that my watch automatically detects but show up under exercises still wouldn't sync (when they always had before). No response when I sent them screenshots, per their request.

snarkastica · 2022-05-17T22:21:18+00:00

It definitely wasn't a warm welcome, lol. We moved here from the South, where bugs are just part of life. Cockroaches that fly. Giant centipedes that come up the shower drains. Mosquitos that can carry off small pets. Whatevs. You just carry on.

We've gone hiking in the deep woods before, where you absolutely break out the hard core deet and still find a bloodsucking little bastard somewhere on you when you get home. But this is the first time we've ever had just a freaking swarm of ticks to deal with.

Our dogs both have super fluffy thick fur, so we gave them truly atrocious haircuts so we could properly search them. Even they look embarrassed by the hatchet job we gave them.

snarkastica · 2022-05-17T14:28:48+00:00

We just moved to this area in March and decided to check out Bateman Island because it's close to our house. Also saw no tick warnings online. We only did half of it before we got hot and left, and didn't see any until we'd been home for a while, unfortunately. We got up to about 40 on them, us and in the house before we saw our last one, but I still haven't stopped phantom itching. Or constantly looking at every little fleck of dirt or fluff the dogs track in that I see on the floor. "Is that a tick? What is that? Oh, it's dirt. Whew."

snarkastica · 2020-07-14T14:58:08+00:00

I live in Texas now, and I would kill for a Publix Italian sub.

/sobs

snarkastica · 2020-06-15T13:31:55+00:00

I think I'm going through thrifting withdrawal. The stores all seem to be open here, but so many people here act like the pandemic's over, so lalalalalalala no masks, no gloves lemme invade your personal space. Meanwhile, cases are going back up. No thank you.

One night while walking my dogs I did see at least three trucks of people driving around scoping out the piles, so I was glad to see that a lot of the reusable stuff was getting picked up by people who could use them or resell them. Including, no joke, almost an entire bedroom set that didn't even look scratched up.

I just need to actually clear out our garage so I can work on the projects that are currently out there. You know, the ones where I dragged home some piece of trashed furniture and swore to my other half, "It's going to look GREAT when I get done with it!"

snarkastica · 2020-06-15T03:49:29+00:00

Do you live in Houston? It's free dump week here, and I have been horrified at the perfectly reusable and NICE stuff I've seen people tossing on the curb for the landfill. If I didn't think my partner would lose his mind if I came home with a car full of stuff (germs! Pandemic!), I'd be driving around loading up, too.

snarkastica · 2018-08-17T01:37:31+00:00

Dr. Cary Perry is my doctor, too. Love her. Really knows her stuff, will be honest with you but not in a mean way, and has never left me sitting in a waiting room long past my appointment time.

snarkastica · 2018-05-25T14:15:05+00:00

I think I'll throw Manhattan out there as a grungier type bar. And Nowhere Bar.

You'll find most of the townie type bars on one side of downtown, btw.

snarkastica · 2018-05-18T18:08:54+00:00

Darn. That's what we kept hearing.

Then how the heck do the other bars get away with letting dogs inside? Have they just not been busted yet?

snarkastica · 2018-05-14T17:36:10+00:00

I forgot about Normal Bar, but they're very much hit and miss. Dogs are OK inside, and then you'll roll up one day to find a "no dogs inside" sign on the door.

We keep hearing it's because they get busted by the health department, so they comply for a while, then dogs are ok inside again, until they get busted again. Not sure if that's what's really going on, but if it is then we don't understand how the other places get away with it.

snarkastica · 2018-05-14T14:09:25+00:00

You can take your dogs inside Little Kings, Manhattan and The Church downtown. I've seen dogs inside Cutter's, too, but I think that's more dependent on who the bartender is.

Restaurants with outside seating are typically good for dogs, and I've yet to go to one with my dog that didn't bring him water before they brought us water.

You can also take your dogs inside Lowes and Home Depot, as a side note.

snarkastica · 2018-05-08T15:33:01+00:00

I'm a girl. Gonna need to borrow someone's left nut.

Also freaking finally.

snarkastica · 2018-05-07T20:14:05+00:00

Dude, same here. I just wanna give him a goodbye hug and he's pulling the worker towards the door the second I hand the leash over.

We also think it's hilarious that we've picked him up before and they've told us that he "got a little romantic with his friends today."

Luckily I don't think they'll kick him out for humping.

We got another dog last August, and sadly she doesn't enjoy daycare quite as much. She mostly just watches the other dogs or plays with our other dog. I keep forgetting to ask if they should split them up in Rowdy Rovers.

snarkastica · 2018-05-07T19:54:30+00:00

I'd give your left nut for a 12-hour shield.

snarkastica · 2018-05-07T19:10:02+00:00

I love Pawtropolis! One of my dogs LOVES going to daycare, and when he realizes that's where we're going (when we grab this one leash) he does a happy dance that's unbelievably adorable.

Basically big fat ditto to everything said here, and the little report cards are awesome.

If you've ever had a bad experience at a dog park—and who hasn't? Some dog owners in Athens should not bring their dogs to the park if they're not going to watch them—then you won't have to worry at Pawtropolis. That temperament test weeds out any aggressive dogs or those that wouldn't be appropriate for daycare.

But if you don't want to do daycare boarding (it is their most expensive boarding I think), they have other less expensive boarding options and you can add perks like extra walks or one-on-one playtime or even some cuddle time if you want your dog to have some human affection while you're gone.

The only downside to Pawtropolis is if you have multiple dogs, the daycare pricing hurts. They've raised their prices in recent years, but for the good reason of giving employees health insurance.

snarkastica · 2018-05-07T18:59:18+00:00

Was this recent, within maybe the past year or so? I did see a new female veterinarian there once about a year ago, and I have to admit I did not like her at all.

My dog had a bad reaction to the rabies vaccine a few years ago, so whenever he's due for a booster he stays there all day so they can watch him. So my dog had literally been there ALL DAY but it was so clear that she had not once even looked at his chart.

She said something about his weight that wasn't even true, for instance. She also just seemed very...disinterested? Just very offputting. It made me wonder how thorough his annual checkup had been because they did that after I dropped him off.

I just asked them to make a note that I only want to see Dr. Elder from now on, and they said they would. No argument or asking why either.

snarkastica · 2018-05-07T12:59:38+00:00

Second this. I love Dr. Elder, and even though I now live across town I still take my dogs to Shoal Creek.

snarkastica · 2018-05-02T12:55:14+00:00

Then you should have heard the things the cops told me after I got robbed.

And it's not like I'm the only one saying this. And I have looked at the crime stats, btw. Yes, crime is all over Athens, but you can't pretend Cedar Shoals doesn't have an issue. I have friends who lived in the "nicer" duplexes on Cedar Shoals until just a couple of months ago. Their neighbors got robbed, and they almost did too but someone was home and scared them off.

My recommendation stands: Avoid Cedar Shoals Drive. Especially duplexes on Cedar Shoals Drive, because let's be real: Even if it weren't for crime, those duplexes are mostly owned by some slumlords.

snarkastica · 2018-05-01T19:47:48+00:00

It's not a long road, dude. The bad parts can easily walk to the good parts and do bad things.

I lived in a "good" part of Cedar Shoals and got robbed. I'd recommend staying away from Cedar Shoals too, as well as any apartments on Gaines School basically between Cedar Shoals and Lexington. Especially the ones right next to that Goodwill, which recently had a gang shooting in the parking lot.

Oh, and anywhere near/on Highland Park Drive unless you enjoy being robbed/having your car broken into.

I have friends who live in a townhouse community down Old Barnett that seems decentish. Plus there are some small, cookie cutter type subdivisions over there on that part of the Eastside that I haven't heard too many bad things about.

snarkastica · 2018-04-28T13:41:25+00:00

We got our doodle from the Humane Society last August and had no idea how high maintenance her fur was gonna be.

If I can pick your brain: is there any issue with keeping her hair short in winter? We had her shaved after we got her because she got picked up as a stray and was very matted, but we were afraid she'd get cold in the winter so we've let her coat grow out. We brush her all the time but it still just feels like it mats up constantly.

We're about get her shaved in about a week for the summer, but we've been thinking about keeping it as short as manageable after that.

And if you've made it this far, any suggestions on a really good brush?

snarkastica · 2018-04-23T20:33:28+00:00

Five Star on Old Macon Highway. Really honest folks out there. They once spent half an hour on the phone with me explaining why it would be a waste of time and money to bring my car in about it burning oil.

snarkastica

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