Two weeks is long enough for a routine to wobble. The first evenings run on your instructions, fresh in her mind; by the second weekend she is working from habit, tiredness or a busy day of her own. A sheet with a row for every evening carries the routine for her, and its blanks speak as clearly as its initials.
The Sheet: Fourteen Rows, Five Fields
Print one sheet, or two weekly sheets if the print is small, with fourteen dated rows and the same five fields on every row: date, medicine as prescribed, evening time due, initials of the sitter once given, and the agreed missed-dose action. Write the dates in before you leave, all fourteen, so no row can be quietly skipped by a sheet that ran out. Copy the medicine wording from the prescription label exactly, because she should never have to interpret shorthand or remember which bottle a nickname referred to. Leave generous room in the initials field, since a cramped box encourages the initials to migrate to the end of the week and be written from memory.
Pin or tape the sheet where the evening routine happens — beside the medicines themselves, not in a welcome folder in another room. Medicines stay in their labelled packaging next to it, and a pen lives with the sheet. Keep pen, sheet and medicines together.
A Worked Example of One Row
Monday, first evening · medicine as prescribed: one tablet from the labelled bottle bearing the dog's name, exactly as the prescription directs · evening time due: 7:30 · initials of the sitter once given: J.M. · agreed missed-dose action: if refused, note refused beside the row, text the owner that evening, and follow the vet's written instruction kept with the sheet. Read that row as she would at half past seven, tired, with the dog waiting. Nothing in it needs translating, and the one thing she must decide — what to do about a refusal — was decided for her before you left, by you and your vet, not improvised by her at the sink.
Note what the example does not contain: no dose changes, no doubling up, no judgement calls about giving a late dose anyway. The sheet records what was prescribed. Adjusting a dose or an interval is a vet decision, reached by phone if it is ever needed, never a line she fills in alone.
Walk It Through Before You Leave
Sit with her once and give an evening dose together, sheet in hand. Show her how the medicine is given, what the dog does to resist or to help, where the treats that follow it live, and how you want a spat-out tablet recorded: note it in the row, with the time, rather than silently re-giving until one stays down. Agree how she reports back — a photo of the sheet every few days works well, because you can see the initials accumulating and she knows the record is being read. Agree, too, what earns an immediate call rather than a note: a dose refused two evenings running, the dog unwell, a bottle dropped or lost.
Reading the Sheet When You Return
Collect the sheet and read it the day you get home, with her if she is still there. A clean run of initials is the outcome you wanted, and saying so matters. Any gaps, refusals or notes get transferred into your dog's own records with their dates, because a fortnight of patchy dosing is information your vet will want at the next appointment, not a secret the sheet keeps. If a dose was missed, pass that to the vet exactly as recorded; the honest row is what makes the record worth keeping.
Keeping that record is simple once the habit exists, and KinsLe helps because its Pet Passport can hold the photographed sheet beside the prescription wording it came from, turning a loose page from a holiday into part of your dog's permanent medication history.