Every pet sitter knows the 9 p.m. text. "Quick question; does Maple eat before or after her walk?" You're three time zones away, the answer lives entirely in your head, and you're now remembering all the other things that live there too: the gate that doesn't latch, the thunder blanket, the fact that she'll only take her pill in peanut butter, never cheese.
Most handoffs fail for one reason: the person who knows the pet best keeps the manual in their memory. This checklist gets it out. Use it for a professional sitter, the neighbor's teenager, or your in-laws; the information is the same, only the trust level changes.
The essentials (non-negotiable)
- Food, exactly. Brand and flavor, amount per meal, meals per day, and where the food lives. "One scoop" is not a measurement; whose scoop? Include the trick if there is one: warmed up, water added, served away from the other pets.
- Medications, with the how. Name, dose, time of day, and the administration trick that took you months to figure out. "Half a tab at 8 a.m. wrapped in a pill pocket, then watch her for two minutes because she cheeks it" is the difference between medicated and not.
- Your vet, and the emergency vet. Name, address, phone for both. The 24-hour emergency clinic matters more than your regular vet; problems rarely schedule themselves inside office hours.
- Your itinerary and a local backup. Where you are, when you land, and one nearby person with a key who can step in if the sitter gets sick. Two layers deep is the minimum for trips over a weekend.
The routine (what makes them feel safe)
Pets don't know you're coming back; routine is how they cope. Write down the actual day: wake time, walk times and the usual route, where they sleep, how long they're used to being alone. If your dog gets a "place" command before dinner or your cat gets ten minutes of wand-toy time at sunset, say so. The closer the sitter runs your script, the calmer the pet.
The quirks (what only you know)
This is the section sitters quietly value most, and the one most people forget to write.
- Escape behavior. Door-darting, fence-jumping, the screen they've learned to open.
- Fears and triggers. Fireworks, thunder, the vacuum, men in hats, the doorbell. Include what helps: the closet they hide in, the blanket, the white-noise trick.
- Food and resource guarding. If the dog stiffens over a chew or the cats can't be fed within sight of each other, the sitter needs that before the first meal, not after.
- The words they actually know. Your dog doesn't speak English; they know your cues. "Off" versus "down" versus "leave it" matter. List the five commands that genuinely work and how you say them.
- Hiding spots. For cats especially: the three places they vanish to, so an "I can't find her" panic is a 30-second check instead of a frantic hour.
The emergency kit
- A recent photo of each pet (your camera roll doesn't help the sitter make a flyer).
- The microchip number and which registry it's in. If you've never checked that the chip's contact info is current, do it before the trip; a chip that points at your old number is decoration. Trovvy's microchip registry does free lookups if you're not sure what's on file.
- A short, signed authorization-to-treat note: "Sitter X may authorize veterinary care for [pet] up to $[amount]; call me first if reachable." Most emergency vets will ask.
- Where the carrier, leash, and muzzle (if any) live. Emergencies are not the time to search the garage.
Paper goes stale; a living profile doesn't
A printed sheet on the fridge is the classic move, and it's fine; right up until the dose changes, the food changes, or you adopt a second cat and the sheet quietly becomes fiction. The failure mode of paper isn't missing information; it's outdated information that still looks authoritative.
This problem is half the reason I built Trovvy. A pet's profile holds the feeding details, meds, quirks, vet info, and emergency contacts in one place that's always current; you can hand a sitter a QR-code pet passport that shows exactly what they need (and nothing they don't), or grant time-limited access that ends when the sit does. The sitter logs walks, meals, and photos as they go, so instead of a 9 p.m. question you get a 9 p.m. picture of a happy dog. Here's how families use it →
The five-minute version: if you do nothing else, write down food (brand/amount/times), meds (dose/time/trick), both vets' numbers, one local backup human, and the single weirdest thing about your pet. That covers 90% of real sits.