The example details below are illustrative, to show the method — not a real animal. Fill in your own pet, and treat this as a practical handover, not veterinary or legal advice.
Step 1 — Start with the animal, not the schedule
Before feeding times or walk routines, write down what a stranger would need to identify and hold your animal: name, species and breed, age, markings, weight, whether they’re spayed or neutered, and the microchip number. These are the facts a vet, an emergency clinic, or a shelter will ask for if your animal is ever found or brought in without you there — and they’re exactly the facts a sitter can’t guess or improvise on your behalf.
It feels like the obvious part, which is why it gets skipped. Write it anyway, at the top, before anything about the day-to-day.
Step 2 — The warnings go near the top, not the bottom
Next comes the section that prevents the thing you’d most regret, and it belongs near the front of the page, not buried after the feeding schedule. Write down the specific things that could go wrong:
- Bolts through open doors — hold the leash before the door opens, not after.
- Startles at thunder or fireworks — where they hide, and to leave them be.
- Guards the food bowl — don’t reach in while they’re eating.
- Can’t be fed near the other animal — feed in separate rooms.
A sitter who reads these first is a sitter who’s braced for them. A sitter who finds out the hard way is one who’s already had the surprise.
Step 3 — Feeding, meal by meal, in amounts not adjectives
Write feeding the way you’d want it written for you: an amount, not an adjective. “One cup” tells a sitter something useful; “a scoop” or “a normal amount” leaves them guessing how much the scoop actually holds. Pair the amount with the time of day and what — if anything — goes in the bowl alongside it.
Then add the line people forget: what treats are allowed, and how many. Without it, a sitter erring on the side of kindness is an easy way for an animal to come home heavier than it left.
Step 4 — Medications: write the dose exactly as the label reads
If your animal takes anything regularly, write the dose exactly as the label states it — “half a tablet” means nothing to someone holding a bottle where two different strengths look almost identical. Copy the dose as written, and add what it’s for, how often, what time of day, and whether it needs to go in food to be taken at all.
This is not the place to summarize or round off. A sitter following your exact words is a sitter who can’t get it wrong by interpreting them.
Step 5 — Two vets, not one
Name two places before anyone needs either of them: your regular clinic, and a 24-hour emergency hospital picked in advance rather than searched for at 2am with an anxious animal in the car. Write the address for both, because a person driving there wants a destination, not a phone to tap at while they drive.
Choosing the emergency hospital now, when nothing is wrong, is the part of this step that actually matters — it’s a five-minute decision today instead of a stressed one later.
Step 6 — Permission to treat, and a number to spend to
This is the part that often gets left out, and it’s the one an emergency runs into at the front desk when it’s missing. A caregiver who isn’t the animal’s owner generally can’t authorize veterinary treatment on their own, and a clinic that can’t reach you has no direction on how much to spend or whether to proceed.
Write it out plainly:
- An amount you’re comfortable authorizing without reaching you first.
- A second contact — a family member or close friend — who can make the call if you’re unreachable. Ask them first, and give a phone number, not their home address.
- Your signature, dated, so it reads as your instruction rather than the sitter’s guess.
Be clear that this is a practical handover note, not a legal document, and that a clinic may still call to confirm before proceeding. What it does is give the sitter and the clinic somewhere to go if you don’t pick up — which is the entire point of writing it down before you leave.
Step 7 — The routine that isn’t feeding
Round out the page with everything else that makes up the animal’s day: walks — where, how long, on or off leash — litter, whether there’s an alarm or camera to arm or ignore, where the leash and food live, and what the animal does when they’re anxious and how you usually settle them. None of this is dramatic, which is exactly why it’s the part that gets left to memory and then forgotten under it.
One rule holds for this section: write where the alarm panel is and who to call about it — never the code itself. The same goes for anything else that unlocks something: an account login, an insurance policy number, a safe combination. A sitter needs to run the animal’s day, not your accounts.
Step 8 — Leave it where they’ll find it, and take it back afterwards
Put the finished page somewhere a sitter can’t miss it — the counter, the leash hook by the door — but inside a folder rather than face-up on the fridge, because it carries your signature, your second contact’s number, and your animal’s chip number, and anyone who walks through the kitchen can read it. Take a photo of it yourself before you go, so you still have it if the paper is misplaced.
If you text the sitter, send the feeding and medication details, not a photo of the signed authorization — that page is the one thing on the counter you’d rather not have living in someone else’s camera roll. When you’re home, collect or shred it.
A worked example: the front page a sitter reads first
Here’s what the top of a good pet handoff looks like — the at-a-glance a sitter needs before reading anything else. (Illustrative, not a real animal.)
| Field | What the sitter sees |
|---|---|
| Animal | Biscuit — mixed-breed dog, brown with a white chest patch, neutered |
| Microchip | Number on file, taped to the inside of this folder |
| Watch for | Bolts through open doors — leash before the door opens |
| Feeding | 1 cup, twice daily (7am / 6pm); no more than two treats a day |
| Medication | [Dose exactly as the label reads], [timing] — with dinner |
| Regular vet | [Clinic name and address] |
| Emergency vet | [24-hour hospital name and address] |
| Treatment | Authorized up to [amount]; second contact: [name and number] |
| Routine | Walk 7:30am and 5pm; leash and food in the hall closet |
Notice what makes this usable in a hurry: the warning is on the same page as the feeding amount, and the vet a sitter would actually need is named before they need it — not left for a search once something’s already gone wrong.
Put it in one owned file
If you’d rather this stayed on paper, the free Pet Sitter Sheet is a printable version of the handoff page above, with a filled-in example alongside a blank one to complete for your own animal.
You can write all of this on a sheet of paper, and for one weekend that’s plenty. If you have more than one animal, or medications and vaccination dates that change over time, the Pet Care & Records Binder does the part a static page can’t: pick a pet from a dropdown and the identity, feeding schedule, live medication list, vets, and vaccination status arrive already filled in from records you keep once — instead of a page you rewrite before every trip. It’s a file you own and keep, not a subscription app holding your animal’s records on someone else’s server.
If you’re also leaving instructions for the house itself — entry, shutoffs, the daily must-dos — see How to Write House-Sitter Instructions, its companion piece. For background, what a pet records binder is covers what a complete record holds, and pet records binder vs a pet care app weighs an owned file against a hosted one. This is a record-organizing approach, not veterinary or legal advice; for how much authority a caregiver actually has to consent on your behalf, or what your state or local law requires of pet sitters, that’s a question for your veterinarian or a local attorney, not a template.
