Handing the Chew Over: What a Sitter or a Boarder Needs to Know

Tell a sitter three things and the chew travels intact: the count you already give, a person in the room, and the stub taken away once it could fit in your dog's mouth. Write them down. A rule you only said out loud does not travel.

The bag is packed by Wednesday. The note gets written in the car — food, leash, vet's number, the pill at seven. The chew gets a shrug and a sentence about how much he loves them. That tells a sitter nothing she can act on. This page is the three lines that replace it.

The three lines a sitter has to be told

Three lines cover it. The count stops a generous sitter from being generous twice. The room rule asks for presence, not a stare. Three inches is the proxy — the mouth is the rule.

Which chew you send is a separate decision, and it is better made before the bag is packed. If you have not sorted the two lamb lines yet, both lamb chews in one place does that first.

A sitter is not the person to ask which texture your dog prefers. Which of the two your dog is settles it properly. Settle it before you hand the decision to somebody else. Send the answer, not the question.

Why a chew is the part of the routine that packs

A chew needs no fridge and no scoop. Under half a pound, a 36-month shelf life, and a bag that reseals. Nothing about it changes because the address did. Set it against a raw topper or a half-open can — the chew is the only piece of the routine that arrives unchanged.

Chewing is also what a dog does in a new place, not something he manages despite it. Texas Tech researchers writing in 2025 put chewing alongside feeding, the exploration of new environments and objects, and learning. That describes a first evening in your sitter's living room.

Their own trial found no change in how often the puppies chewed things they should not. Twenty-nine puppies, one week. The authors point to the small sample size. Read the sentence as framing, not proof.

The sealed count you hand over

Send a count, not a bag. Loose sticks in a freezer bag turn into a judgement call. A sealed pack with a number on it survives the handover. The 6-inch lamb collagen and tripe variety pack is ten chews in one resealable bag — five of each texture, all six inches.

Send both textures, because a sitter cannot make that call for you. Collagen is the braided one, and it is odor free. Tripe is the softest chew we make, and its rich, meaty aroma is what gets a dog to take a chew at all in a house that smells wrong to him. That aroma runs while he chews and fades fast afterwards. A sitter holding both never has to phone you about a refused stick.

Check the beef line before you pack. The 10-count is lamb only, no beef. The 15-count adds thin bully sticks, which are beef. Both mixed bags sit together, so read that line if the house he is going to keeps beef out of the bowl.

Four setups, and the note each one needs

There are four ways this usually goes, and each one moves a different line on the card. Your house or hers, her dog or no dog. Somebody's home, or a facility running a policy.

The table sorts the setup, not the dog. Three of the four rows change what you pack, and every one changes what you write. The row people skip is the last — a facility that declines outside chews is not a bad facility, it is one policy running across every dog in the building.

One setup is missing from that table on purpose. A chew with nobody in the room is a different problem with a different answer. It does not get smaller because the empty house belongs to somebody else. The trip you take him on is its own page too — a chew in a car and a rented room is the version where you are still holding the leash.

What the pack already says, and what your handwriting adds

The pack carries most of the note already. Seven feeding lines sit on the lamb tripe product page, and the back of the bag your sitter will be holding carries the feeding instructions too. Four of the seven decide a handover: supervise the chew, pick one slightly larger than your pet's mouth, discard small or broken pieces, and swap the stub once it is small enough to swallow. All four are already written down. What your card adds is the count and your dog's name, which is the part no label can carry.

Step one of those seven and one line in WSAVA's list of healthy treating habits are the same instruction. The global veterinary body asks owners to supervise dogs with chews, treats and toys. Any treat should be an appropriate size and shape, to reduce the risk of choking. Neither sentence names who supervises. That is why the note works.

Read those two lines back and notice what is not in them. No minutes, no timer. There is no published chew-time figure for lamb collagen or lamb tripe, ours included. A note promising twenty quiet minutes promises a number nobody has measured.

The two rules that do not bend for a houseguest

Both rules are things you can see. VCA writes them about toys, and they transfer intact. A thing should never be small enough to fit entirely inside a dog's mouth. Take it away when he is chewing off chunks, or biting hard enough to stress his teeth. Both halves are visible from the sofa.

Three inches is the number people remember, and the mouth is the rule underneath it. When the stub arrives sizes that moment dog by dog. If the note needs a number for the sitting rather than the stick, how long a sitting runs has one.

Do not let a stranger discover a guarder. If your dog stiffens when a hand comes near a chew, that goes on the note in your handwriting. Not in her memory of the evening she found out. Send the trade, step by step with him.

What to leave off the note, and where it lives instead

A card holds a few lines, not a syllabus. The daily count is a routine instruction rather than a calculation, and it should read like one. The treat budget, as arithmetic is its own page — not a line on a card that also carries a phone number.

The same goes for the emergency. If a piece goes down whole, the sitter needs your vet's number and your cell — in that order, with permission to use both. Do not compress a medical decision onto a card.

Send them the page written for them. This one is written for you, and the two are not interchangeable. The same weekend from the other side is the mirror of it. Forward that one, because it asks what they will want to know before they open the bag.

Dog sitter chew FAQ

What should I tell a dog sitter about giving my dog a chew?

Three lines cover it: the count you already give, handed over in the same room as a person, and taken away once the piece could fit inside your dog's mouth. Write them on the card with the food and the vet's number. Say how many you are leaving, so the bag and the note agree. A rule you only said out loud does not travel.

Can I send dog chews to a boarding kennel?

Send a sealed pack rather than loose sticks, and ask when you book, because chew policies differ from one facility to the next. Label it with your dog's name and write your daily count on the label. Say whether your dog needs to eat alone, and that the stub comes away before he could swallow it. Staff who know the routine will keep it.

Should I send the chew my dog already knows, or try something new?

Send the one he already takes, and a second type as a fallback. A strange house is the wrong week to test a texture, and a familiar chew is the part of home that fits in a bag. A dog who turns down a lamb collagen twist at a new address still has a lamb tripe stick to fall back on. A ten-count pack of both covers that without a second bag.

The chew is the easiest thing in the bag to hand over and the easiest one to hand over badly. Send the count, not the bag; send the rule, not the reassurance. Then whoever has him takes the stub away.