Fetch Meets Fast: How Wag! and Vetty Power Pet Care

As one of the largest pet-care marketplaces in the country, Wag! connects pet parents with more than 500,000 trusted caregivers. With a lean internal team and a business that shifts gears faster than you can say “walkies,” every operational process has to be airtight.

Wag!’s mission was simple to state but tough to nail: keep the caregiver side of the marketplace strong, safe, and always ready. That meant lightning-fast onboarding, uncompromising trust and safety standards, and a screening engine that could scale on command, no dropped leashes allowed.

That’s where Vetty came in, becoming a foundational part of how Wag! delivers trust at scale.

The Challenge

Each spring and summer, new cohorts of college-aged caregivers flood Wag!’s applicant pool, sending volumes soaring. These surges were expected, but managing them without adding friction, cost, or risk is a different kind of tug-of-war.

Before Vetty, Wag!’s onboarding and screening lived across multiple vendors. Everything sat in separate systems with rigid workflows that didn’t play nicely with Wag!’s evolving in-house ATS and LMS. Manual reviews piled up, operational lift crept higher and fraud-related edge cases, like mismatched names or underage applicants, demanded hands-on intervention.

Meanwhile, the price tag kept climbing. Wag! had previously relied on a pricey background check provider that wasn’t built to adapt, making it hard to focus screening on what actually matters in pet care.



Wag! didn’t need another vendor. They needed a partner who could modernize trust and safety without slowing momentum.

The Fix

So Wag! partnered with Vetty to bring screening into a single, seamless flow. By unifying everything into a single flow, Vetty helped Wag! reduce fraud while making the caregiver experience smoother from day one.

Customization powered everything. Vetty worked side by side with Wag!’s team as they built and refined their internal ATS, making screening feel native, not bolted on. Automated name matching resolved issues affecting more than half of previously reviewed applicants, while live identity verifications (IDV) cut selfie and identity failures by 75%.

Vetty also introduced a customized matrix designed specifically for Wag!. Instead of treating every record the same, the matrix zeroed in on what matters most for pet parents, like animal abuse-related offenses, while deprioritizing non-relevant charges. The result? Thousands of unnecessary manual reviews eliminated and a much faster path to approval for qualified caregivers.

Operationally, the impact showed up fast. Streamlined IDV exception handling, correction workflows, and automated candidate communication allowed Wag! to screen at scale without chasing down loose ends.

Then came the ultimate stress test.

A viral TikTok sent applicant volumes through the roof. Screening demand jumped more than 10x overnight.

Vetty didn’t blink. Queue-based processing absorbed the surge, turnaround times stayed steady, and what could have been an operational meltdown turned into momentum, generating revenue instead of support tickets. Candidate communication flowed directly through Vetty, deflecting the majority of screening-related questions away from Wag!’s overwhelmed support team.

Along the way, the partnership expanded beyond screening. Vetty collaborated with Wag! to design a mini edible program that turned a traditional trust and safety cost center into a profit-generating initiative. Vetty also built a custom Trust & Safety page, clearly communicating the value of their screening program to pet parents and caregivers, reinforcing confidence across the marketplace.

Why It Worked

Wag! and Vetty share the same operational mindset: move fast, stay flexible, and never sacrifice trust.

As Wag! evolved its internal systems and workflows, Vetty moved in lockstep, adapting integrations, refining logic, and supporting new programs without disruption. When volume spiked unexpectedly, Vetty scaled. When communication threatened to overwhelm support teams, Vetty stepped in. And when trust and safety became a growth lever, Vetty helped Wag! capture it.



Rather than simply processing background checks, Vetty became a core component of Wag!’s trust and safety infrastructure, visible to caregivers, meaningful to pet parents, and essential to keeping the marketplace running smoothly.

The Results

With Vetty in place, Wag! unlocked measurable, durable impact across trust, operations, and growth:

• 75% reduction in identity-related fraud.
• 75% reduction in support tickets tied to screening.
• 2.3% reduction in turnaround time.
• 10x applicant surges handled without disruption.

Most importantly, Wag! gained confidence. They can launch new programs, absorb viral growth, and evolve their platform knowing their trust and safety foundation won’t just keep up , it’ll help lead the pack.

In a marketplace that never slows down, Vetty helps Wag! move faster.