The Spare Key — three fill-in worksheets fanned out, 24 pages, print at home

The Spare Key — What to Leave Behind When Somebody Else Has Your Pet

$11.99
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The Spare Key — three fill-in worksheets fanned out, 24 pages, print at home
  • The Spare Key — three fill-in worksheets fanned out, 24 pages, print at home
  • The Spare Key cover — a dog and cat on a rug beside a set of keys
  • The Spare Key File — the method on one page
  • The vet page worksheet — practice details and what you have told them
  • The chain worksheet — who to call, in what order
  • The Spare Key — three fill-in worksheets fanned out, 24 pages, print at home
  • The Spare Key cover — a dog and cat on a rug beside a set of keys
  • The Spare Key File — the method on one page
  • The vet page worksheet — practice details and what you have told them
  • The chain worksheet — who to call, in what order
The Spare Key — What to Leave Behind When Somebody Else Has Your Pet

The Spare Key — What to Leave Behind When Somebody Else Has Your Pet

$11.99

It is the night before. The bag is half packed, the sitter arrives at nine, and you are writing a note on the back of an envelope that says food 2x a day, litter in the bathroom, vet number on the fridge.

That note is not wrong. It is just written for the version of the week where nothing happens.

Think about what you actually know about your animal that is nowhere in writing. That she will not eat if the bowl is in the wrong place. That he goes quiet and flat before he is sick, and that the quiet is the signal, not the vomiting. That the back gate does not latch properly and has to be pushed. That your vet has two numbers and the one on the website is the daytime one.

None of that is exotic. All of it lives in your head, and your head is about to be in another time zone.

The Spare Key is the file you fill in once and hand over with the key. Eight worksheets: who the animal is and how a stranger would describe them to a shelter, the day by the clock with amounts somebody else can measure, where everything lives including the carrier nobody can ever find, the vet page with the question most handover notes stop before, what normal looks like for this animal, who to call in what order, the log your sitter keeps while you are away, and the five minutes when you get home that make the next trip easier.

Almost none of it changes between trips. Fill it in properly once and the next ten handovers are a five-minute update and a photocopy.

What is inside

  • 24 pages, US Letter, print at home or fill in on screen
  • Eight fill-in worksheets, plus a one-page handover for the fridge
  • A daily log with room for twenty-five days, written by the sitter rather than by you
  • Troubleshooting, and an honest page on when a folder is not the right arrangement

Who it is for

Anyone leaving a cat or a dog with a neighbor, a friend, a family member or a paid sitter, in their own home, for a few days to a couple of weeks.

Who it is not for

An animal on a complicated or unstable medical regimen, a very recent rescue nobody can read yet, or a stay longer than about three weeks. Those are not folder problems — they need a boarding facility or a professional sitter with veterinary backup, and no amount of paperwork substitutes for it. The book says so on its own troubleshooting page.

Handbook House guides are educational materials for organizing your own records. This one is not veterinary advice, it does not tell you what to give your animal or what a symptom means, and it is not a substitute for asking your own vet what your animal needs while you are away.

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