The short version: write down whether recall actually works, how your dog behaves on the lead when another dog appears, and what a sitter should do if he refuses food. Those three lines prevent more bad outcomes than the entire feeding schedule, and they are the three most owners skip.
What a dog brief needs that a cat brief does not
A cat sitter works indoors, alone, on a schedule you control. A dog sitter takes your dog out into a street full of variables neither of you can script — other dogs, cyclists, children, an open gate. Almost everything that goes wrong with a dog sit happens outside the house, in the twenty minutes a day the brief usually covers in four words: “two walks daily.”
So the dog-specific sections are not feeding and medication. They are recall, lead behaviour, and the escalation rule. Those are also the sections owners soften, because writing “he lunges at terriers” feels like a confession. It is not. It is the single most useful sentence in the document.
Walks, and the version you would rather not write
Give the route, not the duration. “The long loop” means nothing to someone who has never walked it; “left out of the front door, along the canal to the second bridge, back the same way, about 40 minutes” means they can do it on the first morning without a map.
Then answer the three questions a sitter will not ask directly:
- Is recall reliable? Not “usually”. Say whether he comes back with another dog present, with food on the ground, or near a road. If the answer is no in any of those cases, write “keep him on the lead” and remove the decision from the sitter entirely.
- What happens on the lead when another dog appears? Pulling, lunging, barking, freezing, hiding — name it. A sitter who knows crosses the road at forty metres. A sitter who finds out is already holding the lead at four.
- Who else sets him off? Cyclists, skateboards, men in hi-vis, buggies, children who run. Dogs are specific about this in ways that sound absurd written down and are completely real on the pavement.
Say which equipment you use and where it lives — harness or collar, and whether the harness clips at the front. Front-clip harnesses steer a puller; back-clip ones give him something to lean into. Handing a sitter the wrong one is how a manageable dog becomes a difficult walk.
The dog who will not eat for a stranger
This is the most common panic message a sitter sends, and it is usually nothing. Dogs frequently skip a meal or two in the first day or so when the household changes. A healthy adult dog missing one meal while otherwise bright, drinking, and behaving normally is not an emergency.
Write the baseline so the sitter can tell the difference between sulking and illness:
- What he normally eats, in grams or cups — not “a scoop”. A scoop is not a unit, and the sitter’s scoop is not yours.
- Whether he is a slow or fast eater, and whether he normally finishes.
- Whether food gets picked up after twenty minutes or left down.
- The line that matters: “If he skips one meal but is otherwise himself, that is normal. If he skips two, or he is off food and also quiet, flat or drinking oddly, call me.”
That last sentence converts a 9pm panic into a note. It costs you nothing to write and it is missing from almost every checklist on the first page of Google.
Medication, and the skip-it rule
Name the medication, the dose, the timing, and — the part people omit — what it is for. A sitter who knows the tablet is for arthritis notices stiffness. A sitter handed an unlabelled pill notices nothing.
Then write the skip-it rule explicitly: what should the sitter do if your dog spits it out, vomits it back, or refuses the cheese it is hidden in? “Try once more with peanut butter; if he still refuses, skip it and text me” is a complete instruction. Silence on this point leaves a stranger guessing about your dog’s medication, which is not a position to put anyone in.
The symptoms a sitter should never wait on
Every checklist says “leave the vet’s number”. Very few say what should actually trigger using it, which means the decision falls to someone who has known your dog for two days.
Write an explicit escalation rule. Ours would read: call me first for anything odd, and go straight to a vet without calling for any of these.
The rest of the never-wait list is shorter than people expect. Put it on the brief in this shape, so the sitter is reading a decision rather than making one.
| What the sitter sees | What to do | Why the timing matters |
|---|---|---|
| Swollen or hard belly, trying to be sick with nothing coming up, restlessness | Go now. Do not phone first | Classic bloat/GDV presentation. Measured in hours, and deep-chested breeds are most at risk |
| Struggling to breathe, blue or very pale gums, collapse | Go now | Oxygen problems do not improve while you wait for a call to connect |
| Seizure lasting more than a few minutes, or repeating fits | Go now | A single short seizure is different from a cluster; the sitter cannot tell which is starting |
| Ate chocolate, xylitol, grapes, raisins, ibuprofen or unknown tablets | Go now, take the packet | Treatment is far simpler before absorption; the packaging tells the vet the dose |
| Deep wound, or any injury from a fight with another dog | Go now | Puncture wounds close over the infection they carry |
| Straining to toilet with nothing produced | Go now | An obstruction and a blocked bladder both present this way |
| Skipped one meal, otherwise bright and drinking | Note it. Text at the next check-in | Common in the first day away from you and usually settles on its own |
| Skipped two meals, or off food plus flat, quiet, or drinking oddly | Call me | The combination is the signal, not the missed food by itself |
| Limping, one episode of sickness, scratching, mild upset stomach | Call me | Usually minor, but I would rather decide than have you guess |
Alongside it, leave two numbers, not one. Your day practice and the out-of-hours emergency service are almost never the same place, and the second one is the number that gets used at 11pm. Add your policy number and a written cost ceiling, because a clinic that cannot reach you cannot begin treatment without authorisation, and that is where the delay happens.
None of this is veterinary advice, and it is not a diagnosis. It is a list of the moments when the right move is a vet rather than a text message.
Where this comes from: the escalation list follows the emergency presentations veterinary services publish for owners — Veterinary Emergency Group’s own sitter checklist covers the same ground, and the American Kennel Club publishes the household side. Confirm the list with your own practice before you travel: they know your dog’s history, and they can tell you which out-of-hours service they actually refer to, which is the number worth writing down.
Your dog when you are not there
Dogs behave differently for strangers, and the gap between “my dog would never” and what the sitter meets on day one causes most of the friction. Write the baseline so the sitter can spot a change rather than guess at a personality.
- Alone time. How long is he normally left, where does he settle, and what does he do about it — sleep, bark, chew, pace at the door?
- Overnight. Crate, bed, your room, the sofa. A dog moved off his usual sleeping spot by someone being polite will wake the house.
- Resource guarding. Food bowl, bones, a particular toy, the sofa. This is the one owners most want to leave out and the one most likely to cause a bite.
- Doors and gates. Which he will push through, whether he bolts when the front door opens, and what the escape routine is if he does get out.
- The thing he steals. Every dog has one. Naming it saves a vet trip.
Turning it into something a sitter will actually read
A brief only works if it survives contact with a busy morning. Two pages, in the order the day happens, beats an exhaustive document nobody opens twice. The general rules for structuring one — the eleven points, the three formats ranked, how to hand it over — are in what to leave for your pet sitter; this page is the dog-specific layer on top of it.
If you would rather start from a form than a blank page, the dog sitter checklist template is a free printable with these sections already laid out, including the honest three and the escalation rule.
When a sitter is the wrong answer
An in-home sitter is not automatically the kind option, and the pages selling sitting services will not tell you that.
Reconsider if your dog has genuine separation distress and the sitter is doing drop-in visits rather than staying over — three short visits can be worse than a day at daycare with company throughout. Reconsider if he has a bite history with strangers in the home, where the honest answer is often a boarding facility with handlers who are trained for it, or a sitter who has met him several times first. And reconsider if he is on medication that has to be given at a fixed hour and your sitter is covering four other houses that day; ask directly what time they will arrive, because “morning” can mean 11am.
A dog who is fine alone for a few hours, eats reliably, and walks calmly on a lead is the easy case. Be honest about whether that is your dog before you book.
Frequently asked
What should I tell a dog sitter?
Feeding in exact amounts, medication with timing and purpose, walk routes rather than durations, and the honest version of recall and lead behaviour. Add an escalation rule saying which situations mean call you and which mean go straight to a vet. The behavioural detail matters more than most owners expect, because a sitter who knows what is normal can spot what is not.
Should I admit my dog is reactive?
Yes, in plain words, and name the trigger. A sitter who knows crosses the road early; a sitter who finds out is already holding the lead when it happens. It is not a judgement on your dog. Hiding it is how a manageable walk becomes an incident, and how a sitter declines to work with you again.
My dog will not eat for the sitter. Is that an emergency?
Usually not on its own. Dogs often skip a meal or two when the household changes, and a dog who is otherwise bright, drinking and behaving normally is generally just unsettled. It becomes a call when a second meal is missed, or when the missed food comes with lethargy, vomiting, or unusual drinking. Write that threshold in the brief so the sitter is not guessing.
How long should a dog sitter brief be?
Two sides. It is read once at handover and then scanned under pressure, so anything longer stops being consulted. If it runs over, cut the explanations rather than the specifics — a sitter needs to know the dose and the time, not the reasoning behind the prescription.
