DENTON, Texas — Devin Garza and his dog Juno were regulars at South Lakes Park in Denton.
They’d walk the path, play ball in the grass, rest in the shade.
His first visit to the park without Juno by his side was “difficult,” he said.
“Being a teacher and summer starts and you don’t have your best friend with you – that part is pretty tough.”
Garza does not know where Juno is.
The Denton ISD teacher left the five-year-old Rottweiler mix with a pet sitter on June 8 as he took a quick trip to Oklahoma.
He’d connected with the sitter on Rover, a website and app popular with pet owners looking for people to keep their animals.
He said he’d used the same sitter twice. Juno had been fine both times.
But on June 10, just as he was leaving Oklahoma to head home, he said the sitter messaged him through the app with news that Juno had escaped.
Some of Garza's friends headed to the sitter’s neighborhood to look for her.
He went straight there when he arrived in town.
They all searched for hours that night and into the next day, but Juno never surfaced.
On the morning of June 12, Garza said all contact with the sitter stopped.
He complained to Rover and the app told him the sitter would not agree to provide him with her direct phone number.
“I feel like it should be harder to lose a dog than this,” he said.
Garza kept looking on his own and said no one who lives near the sitter ever spotted Juno, and no doorbell cameras ever caught her on camera.
“I’ve had her since she was two months old. I rescued her at a shelter. It’s just a lot,” he said.
Rover refunded his money, put up a $1,000 reward, posted in online pet-finding forums, and created missing posters that Garza has posted all over the east side of Denton.
But Rover’s terms of service say the app is not liable and that pet owners use it at their sole risk.
“We join Mr. Garza and all who love Juno in hoping she will be brought home soon,” a spokesman for the app told WFAA in an email.
“Our team is also conducting a thorough investigation into this situation and will take appropriate steps to protect our community. In the meantime, this sitter’s account has been suspended,” Rover went on to say.
Garza is desperate to find Juno, but also to share his story as a warning for other animal lovers.
“Use an air tag or a microchip,” he said. Even if your dog has never tried to get away. "You just don’t know what other people are going to do,” he said.
He’s called every animal hospital, and vet nearby and he’s driven to the Denton and Dallas shelters in person.
Two weeks have passed without a sign of Juno.
“It’s just blind hope right now,” he said.