Build the Sheet Around Cues as You Actually Give Them
A cue sheet fails when it is written in training-manual language instead of your language. For each cue your walker may use, write four things in plain terms: the exact word or phrase you say, the hand signal or body position that goes with it, what your dog should do in response, and what happens when she gets it right — a specific treat, a toy moment, or calm praise, whichever she actually works for. Include the small details that carry meaning for your dog: whether "wait" and "stay" are different requests in your house, the release word that ends a position, and how you ask for attention before crossing a road. If a cue is still being learned and is unreliable outdoors, mark it as home-only so the walker does not spend it in traffic.
List What Is Off Limits Just as Clearly
Consistency is damaged less by a missed cue than by a well-meaning substitute. Write down what the walker must not do: words you never use for her, especially her name used as a scolding, any cue belonging to another training approach you have moved away from, corrections you do not use, and situations where the instruction is simply to manage rather than train — cross the street away from an approaching dog instead of practicing focus at close range, for example. Note household rules that look like training from the walker's side: no feeding from the table on a midday visit, no ball game in the garden if that is your rule, doors and gates handled in a set order.
Demo the Sheet on a Joint Walk Before Solo Outings
Paper alone will not align two handlers, because timing and tone live in the body. Walk together once with the walker handling the lead while you watch, and correct the sheet — not just the walker — wherever what you see differs from what you wrote. Owners routinely discover their written description of a signal is not quite the signal they give. Agree the practical details the sheet cannot show: how much lead she gets, what a polite greeting with a known dog looks like, when to shorten the walk, and how the walker reports back — a short note after each walk covering toilet, behavior highlights, anything that startled her, and any cue that did not land.
Keep One Current Version and Retire Old Ones
Cue sheets rot quietly as training progresses. When your trainer introduces a new cue, changes a signal, or a behavior graduates from practiced to reliable, update the master sheet that day and send the walker the new version, asking them to delete or bin the old one. Date each version at the top; a walker glancing at an undated sheet in a drawer cannot tell whether it is current. Keep the master where anyone else who handles her — family, a sitter, a friend covering an emergency — can find it, because the walker is rarely the only other pair of hands a dog has, and every handler reading the same dated sheet is the whole point.
Review Together After the First Few Weeks
Once the walker has real outings behind them, compare notes deliberately. Which cues land every time, which only work in quiet streets, did any situation arise that the sheet did not cover? The walker's answers are training information you cannot get any other way, since they see your dog's behavior with a different person, in your absence, at possibly different times of day. Feed what you learn back into your training plan and into the sheet — a new line about the bin lorry on Thursdays, a revised instruction for the park gate — so the document keeps describing the dog as she is now, not as she was when the arrangement began.
That shared, dated sheet works best inside KinsLe Care Teams, where the walking duty can be assigned to your walker with the same cue instructions and completed walks marked with a timestamp.