The document worth writing once
Write it once, keep it on the fridge, and send a copy. It will save both of you more grief than anything else in this guide, and it makes covering walkers and emergency sitters trivial.
The dog
- Full name, breed, age, weight, and what your dog looks like from behind at fifty yards — genuinely useful if it ever gets loose
- Microchip number and the registry it's with
- Spayed or neutered
- Medical conditions, medications, and timing
- Allergies, including food
- What your dog is and isn't allowed to eat, including which treats
Behavior and triggers
- What scares your dog. Scooters, skateboards, men in hi-vis, the trash truck, umbrellas. Be specific and don't downplay it.
- How it is with other dogs — genuinely, including whether it's different on-leash than off
- How it is with cats, children, cyclists, joggers
- Whether it guards anything — food, toys, doorways, you
- Recall reliability, honestly assessed
- Whether it pulls, and what equipment works
- Whether it will take treats from someone new — a dog that stops taking treats is a dog that's over threshold, which is a useful signal for a walker to have
- Any bite history. Always disclose this. It's not fair to the walker otherwise, and it may affect their insurance.
Logistics
- Where the leash, harness, treats, towels, and cleanup bags live
- Alarm code and how to arm it — and whether the door needs the trick with the handle
- Which doors and gates don't latch properly
- Where the dog is when they arrive: crate, free-roaming, behind a gate
- Whether the dog is allowed on furniture, and whether you care if the rule slips
- Feeding time, if it overlaps with the walk
- Preferred routes, and any route to avoid — the street with the loose dog, the park with the geese
Emergencies
- Your phone, plus a second contact who can make decisions if you can't be reached
- Your vet's name, address, and phone number
- The nearest 24-hour emergency vet
- A written spending limit for emergency treatment, and confirmation the walker may authorize care up to it. Without this a walker can be stuck at a vet's desk unable to consent to treatment.
What a good walk report looks like
Reports are not surveillance. They're how you learn things about your dog you'd otherwise never know, and how small problems get caught before they become large ones. A useful report is short and includes:
- Where they went and roughly how far. Route or duration, not necessarily both.
- Toileting. Unglamorous and genuinely the most medically useful line in the report. A change in frequency or consistency is often the first sign of a problem.
- Mood and energy. Keen, slow, distracted, clingy.
- Who they met. Dogs, people, incidents. This is where you learn who your dog's actual friends are.
- Anything unusual. A limp, a scratch, a refusal to walk a normal route, an unexpected reaction.
- A photo, which is what most people actually want and there's nothing wrong with that.
The line about who they met is the one people underrate. Your walker sees your dog's social life more consistently than you do. If the same Beagle turns up in three reports and your dog lights up every time, that's a real friendship you didn't know about — and it's exactly the kind of thing Pawcial exists to help you keep hold of, since walkers can check dogs in and see which friends are out.
Raising a problem without blowing it up
Most owner-walker relationships end badly over something that could have been a two-minute conversation. A few things that help:
- 1Raise it early and small. A single specific observation the week it happens is easy to act on. Six weeks of accumulated irritation delivered at once is a confrontation.
- 2Describe the observation, not the conclusion. "She's been coming back really wired lately and not settling" is workable. "You're not actually walking her" is not.
- 3Ask a question. "Has anything changed with the group?" gives the walker somewhere to go, and quite often produces an explanation you hadn't considered.
- 4Assume the information gap first. Genuinely, most of the time it is one.
- 5Put changes in writing afterward. A short message confirming what you agreed. Not formality — just how things stick.
Being a good client
Worth saying, because good walkers are in demand and choose their clients too.
- Pay on time, and pay for late cancellations if that's the agreement.
- Cancel with as much notice as you can. A cancellation the morning of costs them a slot they can't refill.
- Keep the equipment in good order. Worn collars, broken clips, and frayed leashes are how dogs get loose.
- Tell them about changes. New medication, a scare at the park last weekend, a house guest, a new dog next door. All of it changes the walk.
- Don't ask them to do things outside the agreement without asking whether it's okay and paying for it.
- Say when it's going well. Walkers hear about problems and rarely about the rest, and the ones who care about the work notice.
The best version of this relationship isn't a transaction. It's a second person who knows your dog well, notices when something is off before you do, and keeps your dog's friendships going on the days you can't. That's worth investing an afternoon of setup in.