Phones run out of charge, get left in cars, and lock themselves against anyone who does not know the code. A printed list on the fridge asks nothing of technology at all: it is visible the moment a sitter walks into the kitchen, readable by a neighbour, a teenager, a cleaner, or a paramedic, and it still works in a power cut.
The List Itself
Keep the list to these six entries. You, with your mobile number, since you are the first call for almost everything. A second contact, a partner, family member, or close friend who knows the dog and can act if you are unreachable, on a plane, or in a meeting that swallows the afternoon. Your usual vet, with the practice name, address, and daytime number, for anything medical that arises in working hours. The out-of-hours emergency clinic your practice directs patients to, with its number and address, because emergencies favour evenings and weekends and the sitter should not have to discover the arrangement while a dog is unwell. A neighbour or nearby key-holder, someone within a few minutes of the house who can get in, sit with the dog, or take over if the sitter is called away. And an urgent-advice line, described by what it does: a number to call for immediate guidance when something is badly wrong and a human needs instructions now, such as a suspected poisoning.
Print each entry with the person's role first and the number large beneath it. Role-first ordering matters: a stressed sitter searches for the vet, not for a surname they half remember.
Why These Six, and No More
Each entry answers a distinct failure. You unreachable is covered by the second contact. The house inaccessible is covered by the key-holder. An illness in hours and out of hours are covered by two separate numbers, because the regular practice's phone may simply ring out at midnight or divert through a recorded message a panicked caller will not finish listening to. The urgent-advice line covers the first five minutes of a crisis, when what a sitter needs is a calm professional voice saying what to do while travelling to the clinic. Routine numbers, the groomer, the daycare, the dog walker, belong in a fuller sitter sheet elsewhere, not on this list; every extra line slows the search for the six that matter.
Keeping the List True
A fridge list decays quietly. Numbers change, vets move, the neighbour who held a key moves away, the emergency clinic your practice uses changes hands. Review the list whenever anything on it changes and on a fixed rhythm besides, perhaps each time you print a fresh sitter sheet before a trip. Date the bottom of the page, so anyone reading it can see how current it claims to be, and replace it rather than crossing out and scribbling, since handwritten corrections are exactly what gets misread under stress. Tell the sitter the list exists and where it is during your handover, and confirm each person named knows they are on it; a key-holder who never agreed to be one is a hope, not a contact.
Add one line under the numbers: where the dog's fuller information lives, the folder or packet with feeding, medication, and authorisation details, so the list acts as the front door to everything else without trying to contain it.
The Digital Mirror
The printed list stays the primary version for the house, because of the locked-phone problem it solves. A shared digital copy still earns its place for the sitter who is out walking the dog when something happens, away from the fridge. Send the sitter a photograph of the list before the stay, and keep the same entries in your own records so updating one version reminds you to update both. Pet Passport in KinsLe mirrors those six entries in the digital file, so the photographed list and your stored version are updated together.