Dog Sitter Neglect

Location: Washington state

My wife and I went out of town last weekend and hired a dog sitter for 3 days. We knew it was going to be a lot as we have 2 dogs of our own as well 4 smallish fosters (25lbs and under). I have never had an issue with them. I take them out an average of 6-7 hours a day. When I can tell they are getting tired I open my shop door where their crates are, they run inside and go to bed. The only rule is I don't leave them unattended.

On the 2nd day of our trip a lot of warning signs appeared. We showed the rear door hadn't been opened for 16 hours. We tried calling, paging our Google home, yelling through the cameras, nothing. She finally text back and said she overslept her alarm (by 6 hours?) and that everything was fine the sensor must not have worked etc. We were obviously upset but let it slide.

The next day she text us and said one of the fosters was acting funny and didn't want to be touched (odd since he is very people friendly). Since it was only 10 hours until we got home we told her he can stay in his crate if he wants. We will try to get another volunteer to come down to check on him but otherwise I will take care of him when we get home.

2 hours later the ring doorbell takes video of multiple people in the front yard chasing dogs around. We obviously freak out, call no short of 50 times, frantically call other rescue volunteers who immediately run over there. They walked in the door, turned around and told us she has to go. We were on speaker phone and told her to get the hell out, booked an earlier flight and tried to get home asap.

We then asked the volunteers to go check on everyone. What they found was one of the fosters near death due to a fight, and the other looked like they hadn't been out in hours. They had never had any accidents in their crate the entire time we had them and there was shit everywhere. Our 3 year old dogs hadn't had a n accident inside since they were 2 months old and we counted 7 pee spots on the rug.

Once we got home it was a disaster. The house was trashed, backyard (which admittedly is being prepped for complete landscaping overhaul so not in great cosmetic shape) had holes dug all over it including 4 completely under the fence into the neighbors property. The fence goes 6" into the ground so these holes took a while to dig. Talked to the neighbor and on the rare occasion she let them out, they were left unattended for hours at a time.

We paid $5000 for emergency surgery for the injured dog, tried to clean up the mess as best we could (at 11pm-1am). Got them all comfortable and went to bed. Woke up the next day, called in late for work, got the call the surgery had failed and he needed to be euthanized and just as I was about to leave was greated by animal control. She had called us in for having too many animals. I guess it's 5 total. Including our cat that made for 7 on the property. We have 1/3 acre and the kennel was in my fully insulated 1500 sq ft shop so not like it was cramped. Of course when they saw the condition of the dogs 2 of which had bite marks on their muzzles they brought trucks down and took them all. Thank God my 2 were already loaded in my car because they go to work with me everyday.

After a short discussion and explaining to the officer the situation she 100% is on the side of the dog sitter bc she is 20 years old and apparently didn't know better. She is old enough to advertise her "business" all over Facebook and coming for a pre trip to take a look at everything and go over procedures (basically the only rule was they can't be left unattended). We gave her multiple opportunities to back out as well as the numbers of 3 volunteers within 10 minutes in case anything happened. They are now saying they are going to charge my wife with animal abuse and let the dog sitter walk away. We have a consultation with an attorney today I was just trying to get an idea if anyone else had gone through something like this and could offer any additional advise.

RIP Canelo