The pet sitter handover: what they actually need to know

Most sitting disasters aren't bad sitters. They're good sitters who were told "she'll be fine, just feed her twice" and then found themselves at eleven at night with a dog who won't eat and a phone that goes to voicemail.

Write the food down as amounts, not descriptions. Not "a scoop" — 180 grams of the food in the blue bag, twice a day, at 7am and 6pm, in two separate bowls because he guards. Say where the food is kept, roughly how much is left, and what to do if it runs out. Say what he is never given: no cooked bones, no grapes or raisins, no chocolate, nothing sweetened with xylitol, nothing from the table.

Medication is where memory fails, so write it, don't say it. One line per medicine: the name exactly as printed on the label, the amount exactly as printed on the label, the time of day, with food or without, and what it's for. Leave everything in one box. Ask your sitter to tick a chart or photograph the packet each time. Never leave someone to reconstruct a dose from a conversation. And make the missed-dose instruction one sentence long: skip it, and tell me.

The part people forget is permission. Leave the practice name, address, phone number and out-of-hours number, plus the name your pet is registered under. Then call the practice and tell them who your sitter is, or leave a signed note saying that person may authorise treatment in your absence — and give a ceiling, "up to this amount, then call me", so nobody hesitates at the moment hesitating gets expensive. NetForPet doesn't process payments, so agree with the clinic in advance how a bill would actually be settled.

Then the things only you know. He bolts if the front door and the kitchen door are open at once. She hates the vacuum and will be behind the sofa for an hour afterwards. He's fine with men in general but not men in hats. She's friendly with dogs on lead and not off it. Ten honest lines like that are worth more than a hundred about how much he loves a cuddle.

Have a real emergency plan, not a hope. It should answer four things: where is the nearest 24-hour emergency clinic and how do you get there without a car; who is the second person to call if I don't answer within fifteen minutes; where are the carrier, lead and a towel; and what is the microchip number. Print it and put it on the fridge. Panic destroys memory. Paper survives it.

Do the handover in person, and do it before the day itself. Have the sitter feed a meal and do a walk while you stand there and say nothing. Watch the lead go on. On NetForPet you can send a sitting request, book a sitter, and share your pet's profile with them — so the age, breed, vet details and health records are already in their hands instead of buried in a text message they'll never find again.

Finally, tell them what a bad night looks like, and that they will never be in trouble for calling you. Repeated vomiting, a hard swollen belly with retching, straining in the litter tray, collapse, breathing that has changed — those go straight to an emergency vet, and the call to you happens from the car.