He was a deceitful arse right to the end. My DH rang him and told him exactly why we were sacking him. Dog walker just kept spluttering "but I did walk him, I did!". We did tell him we had video footage as we were going to send a legal style letter to put the wind up him and try and get some of our money back, but DH (stupidly) got carried away and described his exact movement that week. We told him to expect a letter and hung up. Dog walker knew he was rumbled, at least for that week. Unfortunately it was the first week in Jan, and is given him a Christmas present so dig walker was smart enough to know where had only conclusively caught him that week.
Dog walker turned up on our doorstep later that day, gave back our money for that one week, and some rubbish about how he hadn't walked him for that one week because my dog had "gone for him" and he was "scared".
I was even more livid! My rescue dog does have some fear aggression issues with strangers and unknown dogs. But our dog walker is also a professional dog trainer and has been involved with our dog since we rescued him SEVEN years ago. My dog adored that man.
The videos made me so very sad. My dog dashed up to him, wagging his tail in delight. The dog walker blanked him and pushed his face away! I'm a natural dog lover and who can ignore a dog running up to say hello? You'd naturally pat it. Dog walker looked so cold towards him
.
It's an out and out lie he was scared of my dog. It was obvious from the video that my dog was being friendly, it was clear the dog walker was not scared of him - I mean, if he was so scared why didn't he a) talk to us about this imaginary incident and b) so very bravely kept coming into our house to take our money!!!
No he was being smart. He knew we wouldn't want our dog reported for aggression, it was a threat. We take further action on him, he'll try and get our dog put down!
What a way to punish us for his failure dishonesty! He knows our dog is hard work, we've poured so much time and effort into helping a troubled dog and it's disgusting he used that against us.
I wanted to destroy him locally. I wanted to shout from the rooftops that this man was not only a liar and a thief but obviously doesn't even like dogs! But I couldn't risk my dogs safety over his lies, so much as it killed me, we dropped the whole thing for our dog's sake.
As you can see, I'm at still so so angry with him. I feel so betrayed. We never got another dog walker and DH won't have a cleaner as we struggle to trust people in our house now.
My only regret is that I didn't do something a year earlier when leafs stopped moving etc. My gut knew something was wrong but I ignored it. Trust your instinct.
Sorry, I'm ranting but I'm still livid.