A dog sitter reportedly crammed four dogs into a small shed on a hot night, leading to their deaths and leaving three more in critical condition.
The now heartbroken owners trusted Gabriela Masak with their beloved dogs because of her five-star rating on the dog-sitting app Rover, which was based on more than 900 reviews.
At about 5 in the morning on June 29, the dog owners received frantic messages informing them that their dogs had heatstroke and were being transported to a Houston clinic in a hurry.
The dog owners were misled into thinking their dogs were the only ones Masak was dogsitting (besides her own two dogs.)
Some of the customers were regulars who would be sent pictures of their dogs at Masak’s home, either playing with her two dogs or happily lounging about.
Their recent discovery that Masak kept at least eleven pets at her Timbergrove house has left them feeling deceived.
Masak lives with her partner, Ryan Hilton, a Chevron engineer. Last year, a little wooden hut was constructed in the backyard. This is the structure the dogs were actually housed in.
The shed was equipped with air conditioning. But the dogs died of heatstroke when the air conditioner stopped working while Masak was sleeping in the home. The police informed the owners that Masak had reported the incident to the proper authorities.
In the days following the dogs’ deaths, the house was pelted with eggs by furious neighbors and acquaintances who vented their frustrations with vandalism.
The Ultimate Petsitter and Best in Class are the names of Masak’s dog-sitting enterprises.
At Penn State, she was an undergraduate studying petroleum and natural gas engineering and a part-time petsitter.
Following this, Masak stopped responding to messages and had her Rover profile removed, among other social media accounts associated with her and Ryan Hilton.
