Guides for handing over your pet

Separation anxiety gets covered in most handovers now. Noise phobia — the specific, sometimes severe fear response to fireworks, thunder, or other loud…

A handover written for one cat, then duplicated for a second, misses the entire point of what makes multi-cat households different. Cats sharing a home…

Most owners can rattle off "chocolate's bad for dogs" without thinking about it. Fewer could tell you why grapes are just as dangerous, or that a sitter…

Senior cats hide illness even more effectively than senior dogs, and the signs that matter most are exactly the ones easiest to write off as "just getting…

Cats and houseplants are a genuinely different risk category to dogs and food. A dog getting into the pantry is usually a food problem. A cat and a bouquet…

Every prevention guide ends with a version of the same line: "if it happens anyway, stay calm and contact the owner." True, but not exactly a plan. If…

One pet is a handover. Two or more is a system — feeding order, who's allowed near whom, whose medication looks identical to whose. Most pet-care advice is…

A verbal handover with a friend usually goes something like: a quick walkthrough, "you'll be fine," and a wave goodbye. It works right up until something…

"She gets a tablet twice a day" sounds like a complete instruction until someone who isn't you actually has to carry it out. Twice a day when, exactly? In…

Most of what's written about pet sitting stops the moment you walk back in the door. You get the "how was she?" text, a photo of your dog looking pleased…

A cat who eats like clockwork for you can turn into a cat who won't touch the bowl for a sitter — not because anything's wrong, but because a change in…

You've decided you're going away. That was the easy part. Now you're staring at three genuinely different options for your pet — a boarding kennel or…

Cat owners get told, repeatedly, to check the door before they walk through it. Dog owners tend to get less of this — dogs are "supposed" to stay in a…

You're standing in the hallway with your bag already on your shoulder, running through everything your sitter needs to know, and you can feel yourself…

Writing a handover from scratch every time is how things get left out. Here's a template you can copy, fill in once, and hand to anyone looking after your…

You've covered feeding times and the walk schedule. But if something actually goes wrong — your dog eats something they shouldn't, your cat won't come out…

A professional sitter asks the right questions because it's their job to know what to ask. A friend or neighbour doing you a favour usually won't — not…

Not the big things — those usually make the list. It's the small, specific, "I didn't think to mention it" details that cause most of the mid-stay texts.…

Every pet has one. The thing that sounds completely made up until you've lived with it — and that a sitter has no chance of guessing on their own.

A dog sitter needs more than a lead and a feeding schedule. Walking routine, triggers, commands, and what's genuinely normal versus worth a call — miss any…

You know exactly what your dog needs on a walk without thinking about it. A sitter doesn't have that instinct yet — they only have what you tell them, which…

Cats don't need walking, so it's tempting to think a cat sitter needs less handover than a dog sitter does. In some ways that's true. In the ways that…

Your sitter arrives, and your cat vanishes. No sign of them for hours. If nobody warned the sitter this was likely, this is the moment panic sets in — for…

Most indoor-cat escapes don't happen because a cat runs off. They happen because a door was open a beat too long, and curiosity did the rest. For a sitter…

If your dog gets visibly distressed when you leave, handing them to a sitter can feel like the hardest part of going anywhere. The good news, according to…