A Dog's Best Friend, Shoreham-by-Sea www.dogsinsussex.co.uk

We've just come back from our honeymoon to find a complete shambles left by this poor excuse for a dog sitting service. We originally booked a two week period at 'A Dog's Best Friend' for our honeymoon several months ago, but later found out that our flight would be delayed by an extra day (remember this - it's important later on!). We phoned ' A Dog's Best Friend' to make sure this was ok, they said it was, and we checked again when we dropped off our 7-month old puppy the day before the wedding. We clearly asked 'Does this amount include the extra day,' and the guy said it did.

We then went through our puppy's equipment - food bowl, waterbowl etc, and how often she was fed with what food, and the guy just went 'yeah, yeah, yeah' without taking any notes. We assumed he'd written this down, but it turns out that he hadn't. While we were there, his kids had also left some food on the floor, which he seemed surprised to find our puppy eating. Excuse me? Seven-month old puppy; food on the floor - go figure, it's not hard.

Anyway, we got back to find that our friend (who we'd listed as our emergency contact in case anything went wrong) was now looking after our dog, as this guy hadn't actually written down the extra day and had rudely phoned them up demanding them to take our puppy off his hands, and then told them to pay an extra £14 for the six hours it took them to get to their premises after a working day. He also said that we hadn't left a food or waterbowl with him, and didn't give them back, so we've now had to buy new ones.

He also then complained about the food we were giving her (we give her Science Plan Puppy, as recommended by our vet), saying that her stools were runny. As it turns out, they're not; she was probably just very nervous. He also complained about her chewing shoes, which she never does here (we knocked that habit on the head early on), which leads us to believe that she wasn't given anything to chew, which is really bad for a young puppy. He also went on to criticise our disciplining of her, saying she was the worst dog he'd ever had. This is all really rude, especially considering as he'd looked after her for a day before and said she was no problem. She's also being no problem with us now, although she seems to have picked up some bad habits such as begging for food at the table.

Given the inability of 'A Dog's Best Friend' to write down the dates and keep a proper log of equipment, we also have no confidence in their ability to give a dog the right food, or make sure that other dogs aren't stealing other dogs' chews or equipment.

All 'A Dog's Best Friend' had to do was wait until we got back, clear up the misunderstanding and we'd have happily paid the outstanding £14. As it is, we've had a rotten situation to come back to after our honeymoon, all because of this dog service's inability to do basic maths and keep a log of what they're doing.

All in all very, very poor show.