QUINCY - A dog sitter hired through a smart phone app is facing animal cruelty and larceny charges in Quincy after the dog’s owners came home from a vacation to find their dog left alone in "deplorable conditions" with significant injuries.

Capt. John Dougan of the Quincy Police Department said the sitter will be summoned to a clerk magistrate’s hearing to face potential charges of animal cruelty, larceny form a building and malicious destruction of property. Dougan did not identify the sitter because she has not yet been charged, but the owner of the dog, Quincy resident Joe Hingston, said the woman is 35 and lives in Lynn.

Hingston, a Brookline firefighter and owner of Smokin' Joe's Fire Engine Rentals, said he decided to hire the sitter before vacationing in Mexico because his dog, an akita named Sullivan or "Sully," is getting old and needs special attention. But he said he started getting worried toward the end of his week-long vacation when a neighbor told him that the sitter was leaving his Canton Road home for long periods of time and was seen loading items from the house into her car.

After confronting the sitter in a series of text messages, Hingston said he got home Sunday and found Sully with several open wounds in a pool of urine and feces. He said the 75-pound dog had lost 10 pound while he was away and had developed an ear and bladder infection.

"We’re devastated, to say the least," he said.

Hingston said he soon discovered that the sitter had also stolen from him. He said the woman took about $100 cash from an envelope set aside for a firefighters funeral fund, a collection of gift cards worth between $600 and $800 and several buckets of coins that he’d been filing for years, probably worth between $500 and $1,500.

Hingston would not say how he hired the sitter, but Capt. Dougan said they were connected through a smart phone app called DogVacay that pairs dog sitters with people who need their dogs watched or walked while they're away. The company said Tuesday that the Hington’s sitter had been removed from the DogVacay app.

"This is a deeply heartbreaking event as we think of our dogs as our own family," the company said in a statement. "We're continuing to investigate this matter and are working closely with the authorities and Joe to support them in every way we can."

The company said the sitter had undergone a background check and "completed our rigorous approval process" before being accepted onto the app.