Messages on Doggos

When your profile first goes live, it may take a little while to get your first booking request from dog owners. This is because new accounts start with a low "rank" in our system, and must gradually increase their rank by getting page views (usually by providing a complete and detailed profile, and keeping their calendar up to date) and interacting with dog owners via messages.

On average, it takes 3-5 weeks from going live to receive your first booking request. To increase your visibility in search, we recommend having a detailed profile with plenty of photos and copy, and also, by setting competitive prices for your area.

Pending requests

When a potential new client contacts you, it will show up in the messages area of your account as "Pending". A message will stay pending until you either accept or deny the booking, and you can communicate back and forth with the dog owner as much as you want before making a decision.

Note: It is strongly recommended that you arrange a meeting with the dog's owner, and the dog(s) before accepting the booking. You can arrange this meeting by replying to the message and arranging a date and location that works for both of you, like a local park.

Accepting a booking

After you've met the dog and owner and feel like the booking is a good fit for your home, you can accept the booking by clicking on the "Accept booking" button, located in the same message as the conversation you're having with the dog owner.

Denying a booking

If you feel like you will not be able to fulfill the booking, or you are unsure if you can watch the dog(s) for other reasons, you can click the "Deny booking" button in the message. This will send a system-generated message to the dogs owner that you are not available.

If you deny a booking, the dog owner will still be able to request another date with you, so it is best to respond to messages with an explanation if you cannot ever accept them in the future due to breed/size constraints, allergies, or other reasons.

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Accepted bookings

Accepted bookings will show up on your messages as "Accepted", and will be visible on your calendar. If you need to make changes to an active booking, you'll have to cancel and the dog owner will need to rebook for new dates.

Be careful about cancelling bookings in progress, as this makes the booking eligible for a full refund and may even impact your rank.

You should only accept bookings you are confident you can fulfill, however, everyone understands that "life happens" and unforseeable circumstances may make it impossible to fulfill a booking. In these situations, we recommend you reach out to doggos support in your messages, by clicking the "Support" link in the top right corner.

Archived bookings

Bookings that are no longer active will be moved to the "Archived" tab of the messages page. You can still view the original conversation, and order receipt of archived bookings, as well as communicate with owners. Sometimes this is useful if the dog owner forgot a bowl or toy, or you just want to send a follow-up "Thanks!"

Suspicious requests

While we go through great lengths to protect our community against spammers and malicious users, some accounts do, ocassionally, bypass our systems.

If you receive a message that seems suspicious, we recommend clicking the "Support" link in chat. This will flag the conversation to doggos.com, so we can intervene. Suspicious requests come in many forms, but we recommend flagging any conversation with traits such as:

• Offering to pay or communicate off-platform, where payments are no longer protected by doggos.
• Messages that use numerous special characters, or blend special characters with real letters, such as "ßoår∂ing". These are almost always attempts to get around our automatic spam filtering.
• Offering to pay more off-platform than initially booked. While some dog owners are enthusiastic to provide cash tips, there is no guarantee this will happen.
• Personal information that is inconsistent or changes, like first being contacted by the dogs owner, then the owners cousin, brother, friend, etc.

Note: You should take extra care when accepting "urgent" requests. Although some dog owners really do need same-day dog sitting, these requests can also be fake or prone to high cancellations. Make sure to ask plenty of questions before accepting the booking.

We are constantly updating doggos.com to have more robust security and spam controls and we welcome feedback, questions, or concerns anytime!