These are archived reviews of Elizabeth's Pet Sitting from 2007. For more recent comments, please visit the entry.
2007-02-28 20:49:32 If you want your animals to be happy, hire Elizabeth to take care of them. My redbone coonhound, Rusty, gets so excited when he sees Elizabeth coming up the walkway to take him for a walk or a bike ride, that his tail starts wagging his body. When she drops him off, I'm treated to his mournful hound dog howl. Elizabeth not only has good rapport with animals, but she's very knowledgeable about them, very safety conscious, and very responsible. If my husband and I ever go out of town and have to leave Rusty, I sure hope Elizabeth will be available to house sit. I trust her completely. —ToniBernhard
2007-06-27 17:40:20 Elizabeth, whether it is you, or a friend of yours who keeps deleting other pet sitters off of the Pet Sitting page, may I please ask you to stop?The wiki is a resource for the community, and people should be able to know what their options are. If your service is better, then people will realize that and flock to you. I myself (or rather, my pet) will likely need the services of a pet sitter in the future, but I'll tell you right now that this sort of business practice is the sort of thing that would drive me to someone else. —CovertProfessor
Not apropriate behavior for a pre-vet student Elizabeth. Please comment........
I would like to address both of the previous comments because I run a great business and am a student who dearly cares for all the animals. I do check out my competition and refer people all of the time .I am actually part of a meet up group for pet sitters in the area and talk to them frequently. Up until now not many pet sitters ha not known about the wiki and know thanks to my efforts places like pet pals and such are now listed. I made changes a few times to the page, but did not mean to knock any of my competitors out. I just got tired of people always changing the format to my page(looking into getting a website of my own, but ocntinuing to use wiki as a resource. Please address further comments to me personally.—ElizabethBarthel
Elizabeth, as someone else said, I am not questioning the way that you treat animals, since I have no personal knowledge of it — and I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. However, I don't understand what you say here. You say that you were frustrated with people changing "your" page, but what I had a problem with was the way that you changed the Pet Sitting page (and other pages, such as the Dogs page), not your changes to this page. This page is not actually your page, by the way — and maybe your not understanding that is part of the problem here. It is a wiki page, and a resource for the community. It is not OK for you to delete other people's comments, even if they are negative. What is OK — and good — is for you to respond to comments, as you did with TuNhi00 below. Finally, you ask me to address comments to you personally, but I can't do that — as someone else pointed out, the page that truly is your page (the ElizabethBarthel page) is one where you do have the right to delete comments. And in my opinion, the way you behave on the wiki is relevant to the way that you will behave as a businessperson. I want people I do business with to be honest, fair, and upfront. I very much appreciate that you are coming close to admitting your behavior, and saying that you will do better (on my page, you wrote "I only edited the page a couple of times and deleted by mistake at first and once on purpose" and then "Thanks for your advice, i have learned a valuable lesson). —CovertProfessor
2007-07-16 17:02:48 I am also very curious to know about that last comment posted by CovertProfessor. I am actually a close friend of one of Elizabeth's past customers and I'd like to comment that my friend had a very bad experience last summer. My friend's family was on vacation for a couple days and left their dog at home. They came back to an absolute mess! Dirty stains in the house (after clearly specifying that there are no shoes allowed indoors). Some of the food was eaten. A few of the windows were left open. Also, some of the dishes in the clean dishrack were still left with food stains and grease. I cannot see how someone so professional can be so careless of other people's properties. I don't know how reliable the other sources are (some are probably just friends) but I believe Elizabeth's manner is anything but professional. Also if the above comment is true, I would not definitely recommend Elizabeth to any of my pet owner friends. —TuNhi00
Addressing this comments just shocks me because I am not sure which client they are referring to ,but i would like to set the record straight. First off I always ask before It touch any person's belongings whether it is food or such. Second I respect people's belongings and do my dishes when I am at the home. As far as this comment goes there is only one known case that the dishes were not clean in the dishwasher because I could not get the dishwasher to work properly ,but that house had a cat and a dog. I would like to ask that you have the client themselves make a comment and not go by hearsay because you do not have personal experience. Thanks —ElizabethBarthel
2007-07-17 09:51:23 Elizabeth - it's clear you love animals and no one is questioning that, but you should realize that it's very easy to see what is happening with a wiki - who is making changes and what changes have been made. Simply being honest is the best path to take.
Not everyone is going to love every business, I'm sure you take your work very personally and there are very good reviews on this page. If you simply acknowledge that you were a little over zealous in your actions, apologize, and ask the people who made edits to your page to change them (please do not change someone else's comments yourself), I'm sure people will understand.
2007-07-18 08:57:42 (Original comment removed) ... I've withdrawn my comment; people who are very passionate about their work sometimes do things they shouldn't. I don't feel any kind of "confession" is necessary: Elizabeth wanted to promote her business, but didn't go about it the right way. Based on her responses I don't think this kind of mistake will happen again.
2007-07-28 00:30:51 I saw an Elizabeths poster on the NE corner of F and 8th today —StevenDaubert
2007-09-07 17:48:34 Elizabeth’s warm personality and attention to detail set my mind at ease knowing that Jake and Oreo were in good hands. I was impressed with her professionalism and ability to handle our dogs. The dogs seem very calm when we arrived home. Normally, when they have been left in the past, they are very stressed and destructive, but they acted as we have not even left them and no damages were apparent. I know Elizabeth must have spent a good quality amount of time walking and exercising the boys. As far as communication during our trip, Elizabeth called me on the first night updating us on the status of the boys, and sent journal and picture email updates during the three weeks we were on vacation. It is very comforting to know that Elizabeth is available and I can travel with confidence. I was very happy with her services and hope I can count on her again during the holidays. —SusanBaker
2007-11-19 15:50:34 Elizabeth has been my dog Ferdinand's pet sitter and weekly dog walker for over a year. Ferdinand is a very shy dog, but she is wonderful with him and exposes him to all sorts of positive experiences. I'm always realizing he's learned new tricks and behaviors because she works so closely with him. She has always been completely clean, courteous, and professional, especially when she visits my home. She's also very flexible and understanding with my changing schedule. I definitely would recommend Elizabeth as a dog walker or pet sitter! —AllisonDvorak
"I tried calling Elizabeth once for dog-sitting, but she didn't return my call. Now that I have read some of the comments above, I was wondering who else had bad experience with Elizabeth. And since according to Elizabeth herself, she is swamped a lot of times, does anyone know who else is good? Some of the negative things mentioned above in relation to her business behavior kind of shocked me, regardless of other good reviews."—ChingChing
The best way to reach me is by email because I have a written request and can keep track of requests easier. I answer email very promptly during the school year ,however during midterms and finals I am a bit slower at getting back to people so I am sorry if I never answered a particular phone call or email to anyone,but with the massive requests I receive daily things can get overlooked sometimes. Those that have used my services will tell you once they make contact with me, I am very good at communicator thereafter. Thanks you and HAPPY HOLIDAYS
2007-12-20 00:04:25 Elizabeth is a fantastic pet sitter, who handles a variety of pets, including birds. Trust me, there are not many people in town or even in Sacramento that are competent bird sitters. Dependability and Communication: 4.5 Stars. Elizabeth responds via email VERY well. I send her months worth of travel at a time, and she keeps tracks of the days. She has more than once contacted me to get the travel details for an upcoming trip. She is a student and does get bogged down during finals, but she always has gotten back to me (at most) within 2 days. Its respectable that she does not over commit, understands her time availability, and thus allows herself to focus on her primary goal- school. Caring and compassionate: 5 Stars. Besides treating my birds so well, when in a horrible situation with housing difficulties, Elizabeth offered housing not only for my pets but for me as well. How many business people do you know who are so altruistic and humane? When she takes vacations, she also has recommended other pet sitters in the area and facilitated arrangements for me. Knowledgeable: On more than one occasion, Elizabeth has asked me questions about why I have certain rules for the birds, why I choose one product over another, and even reads the books I have at the house and asks questions about how I handle the birds versus the books. Putting all of the above aside, I TRUST Elizabeth with my "HEART" and "SOUL" once a month, which is a big responsibility for anyone.
She obviously is filling a need in Davis and her reputation far out weighs the paltry and fault-finding comments included on this page (did the sharks smell blood?). As for those that are watching over this page— the few comments from June through July are really confusing. Why not create a summary, with action taken, and the end result. Thus, if the accusations are correct (meaning we "know" she had ill intent), they would be posted in a comprehensible manner without further disparaging her character. —KiKi
