Exercise Logged by Type, Not Just Distance
Have the sitter record what the exercise actually was: lead walk, field run, ball play, training session, or swim, with duration and how your Shepherd seemed afterward. A dog this athletic can be under-exercised into restlessness or over-driven into stiffness, and a type-by-type log shows which days produced pacing and which produced a dog who slept.
Include the household's real routine as the template — morning and evening pattern, rest after meals, and the commands used on walks. Consistency matters: if your dog heels to one word and releases to another, those words go in the log so the sitter is not inventing cues a strong dog will test.
Feeding Times and the Exercise Gap
Log meals with amounts, appetite, and timing, and write the rule plainly: no vigorous exercise immediately before or after meals, with the gap your household keeps stated in the entry template. Note any vomiting, loose stool, excessive gassiness, or appetite drop with the time it appeared.
Give the emergency page its prominence: a tight, swollen abdomen, drooling, restlessness, or trying to vomit with nothing coming up means an immediate vet call, day or night, and the log should say so in those words rather than leaving a sitter to judge a Shepherd's most time-critical emergency alone.
Training Rules and Household Boundaries
Write down the rules the sitter must hold: door behavior, no jumping up, lead handling, whether other dogs are greeted on walks, and what happens at the fence line. German Shepherds read inconsistency instantly, and a weekend of relaxed rules returns a dog who argues about all of them.
Add visitor and delivery guidance — where the dog goes when the doorbell rings, whether he meets guests, and who he already knows. A protective breed plus a stranger managing the front door is a combination that deserves written instructions, not improvisation.
Body Checks: Joints, Ears, Coat and Mood
Ask for brief daily notes on stiffness after rest, limping after exercise, ear scratching or head shaking, coat condition, and itching. Shepherds shed heavily and can hide discomfort behind drive, so a sitter noting 'keen to go, stiff coming home' gives you something real to discuss with your vet if it repeats.
Mood belongs in the log too: appetite for work, night settling, whining or door-watching. Separation anxiety is common in this breed, and dated notes on how the first two nights compared with later ones show whether he adjusted or escalated.
Garden, Perimeter and Night Checks
Shepherds patrol, so add a perimeter line to the log: gates latched after every use, fence checked if he spends time outside alone, and any barking episodes at the boundary noted with what triggered them. Record the last toilet break and settling time each night as well; a dog who patrols a dark house instead of sleeping is showing you the anxiety that daytime entries, when he has company, can completely hide.
Contacts and Completion
Close with owner, backup, and vet contacts, plus the after-hours clinic. Ask for an end-of-day entry even on quiet days — 'nothing to report' written down beats a blank that could mean either.
With duties laid out this way in KinsLe's Care Teams, each walk, meal and body check is assigned to the sitter and marked complete with a timestamp, so you can follow your Shepherd's stay as it unfolds.