Scott Porad with Oscar

In his previous life, Scott Porad ran the technical operations for one of the world’s largest cat blogs: I Can Has Cheezburger.

But now Porad, who left Cheezburger last month, has leashed an entirely new opportunity. Of all places, he’s landed at Rover.com, the Seattle startup that specializes in matching pet sitters with dog owners.

Porad was recently named senior vice president of product development Rover.com, one of three key hires added in recent weeks to the venture-backed company. In addition to Porad, former Microsoft manager Susan Koehler has joined as chief marketing officer and former Amazon.com product manager Kristen Forecki has been named director of customer experience.

Rover.com raised $3.4 million in venture funding last year, including investments from Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund and Madrona Venture Group. (Madrona’s Greg Gottesman founded the company at a Startup Weekend event under the moniker A Place for Rover).

“For this business about dogs to succeed, it’s all about people,” said Gottesman. “We now have built a world-class team across the board, and that makes me excited about our ability to scale this business successfully.”

Aaron Easterly with Caramel on the GeekWire podcast

Rover.com now boasts more than 25,000 approved pet sitters, and more than 100,000 people have signed on to use the service.

As it turns out, Porad (even though he’s somewhat allergic to dogs) owns a miniature schnauzer by the name of Oscar. We’ll see how he fits in — meaning Oscar — with the other pets hanging around the office including Chief Rover Caramel, the 4-pound Pomeranian owned by CEO Aaron Easterly.

More importantly, it will be interestingly to see who becomes the alpha dog in the battle for dog sitting dollars. Looming on the horizon is DogVacay.com, a LA-based startup which raised $6 million from Benchmark Capital and others last November.

Previously: Listen to Easterly talk about Rover.com on the GeekWire podcast

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