What to leave out for your pet sitter before you go

Nearly every awkward moment in this job traces back to something nobody wrote down. The food is in a bin nobody mentioned. The tablet is in a kitchen drawer rather than with the rest of the medication. The dog will not go out the back door because he never goes out the back door. None of it is a crisis, and all of it is avoidable with about ten minutes of setup the night before you leave.

Put it all in one place

One spot on the counter, and everything lives there: the food scoop, the medication, the spare leash, the sheet of paper. Not distributed sensibly around the house where you know it all is. One place. That way there is no interpretation required by someone who has been in your kitchen twice.

The sheet of paper

• Which food, how much, which bowl, and what time. Be specific, because a scoop is not a unit of measurement until you say which scoop.
• Medication: name, dose, timing, where it lives, and the trick that makes your animal take it. The cheese, the pill pocket, the particular way of holding the head.
• What happens if food goes untouched, and at what point you want to hear about it.
• Your vet's name and number, plus whether you have an account there.
• One person locally who can get to the house if something goes sideways and you are unreachable.
• The animal's normal. What he does at night, where he sleeps, what he is scared of, whether he counter-surfs.

The one about normal is the important one

That last item is the one people skip and the one that matters most. A sitter cannot tell that your dog is off unless they know what he is like when he is on. If the note says he always eats immediately and always sleeps on the second stair, then a morning where he does neither is information. Without that note it is just a Tuesday.

Doors, keys and the things that are not obvious

Say which door to use and which one confuses the dog. Say if a lock sticks, if the building door needs a fob, if the alarm has a delay. Sort keys or a door code at the meet-and-greet rather than by text from the airport, and check the code actually works before you need it to.

What you should expect back

A photo after each visit, and a short note if anything was different from the sheet. That is the whole point of leaving good notes: it turns the check-in from a reassurance into actual information. Call (571) 389-4369 if you want to walk through your setup before a first booking.