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.
Ours is Olive. She won't properly settle for the night until everyone in the house has said goodnight to her — skip it, and she's up at 2am looking for whoever forgot. She won't eat from a full bowl; you have to drop one piece, wait, then drop a few more until she remembers she's hungry. And she takes personal offence at anyone who farts near her, for a solid ten minutes afterwards.
None of that is in any general dog-care guide. It's not on a vet's checklist. It's just Olive. And it's exactly the kind of thing a sitter needs to know, because without it, completely normal behaviour reads as something being wrong.
Why these details matter more than the "official" ones
Feeding times and vet numbers are important, but they're also predictable — most sitters expect to ask about those. It's the specific, slightly absurd habits that actually determine whether a stay goes smoothly, because they're the ones nobody thinks to ask about and nobody thinks to volunteer, right up until they cause a moment of "wait, is this normal?"
The kind of thing worth writing down
- A ritual they need before bed, or before you leave the house
- A feeding quirk that isn't just "picky" but has an actual trick to it
- A specific reaction to something ordinary — a sound, a smell, a type of visitor
- A "tell" that looks like a problem but isn't
- Something they do that only your household would recognise as normal
Why this is the hardest part to hand over
Routine and medical info are easy to write down because they're facts. Quirks are harder, because they don't feel like information — they feel like just "how your pet is." That's exactly why they get left out of handovers, and exactly why they're the thing sitters end up texting about most.
This is the whole reason the product's called Quirks & All. Not despite the weird stuff — including it. A profile that only covers feeding times and vet details is only half a handover.