One message when you arrive and the animals are settled, then one short update a day. That rhythm suits most Australian sits, whether it is three nights in Coburg or three weeks in Broome. It goes up to a message at each dose time where there is medication or a pet recovering from surgery, and it comes down to two or three a week once a sit of a month or more has found its routine. The number matters far less than two other things: that both people agreed it before the owner left, and that the sitter then actually sends it.
Underneath the question sit two different worries. The homeowner is usually carrying guilt rather than suspicion, and wants enough proof the animals are fine to stop thinking about them. The sitter is worried about looking either careless or clingy, and in an arrangement where no money changes hands nobody wants to be the person asking for more. Saying the rhythm out loud at handover solves both, because it turns a judgement call into an agreement.
The rhythm is a handover decision, not something to work out in week one
Settle it in the same conversation as the feeding times, and write it into the care notes rather than leaving it in someone's memory. Two lines is enough: when the update arrives, and what is urgent enough to interrupt a flight, a meeting or a night's sleep. Our pet care handover template has a place for both, and the harder version of the same question, who may authorise vet treatment when the owner cannot be reached, belongs in the house sitting agreement.
Agreeing it early also prevents the most common way this goes wrong, which is not a sitter who says too little. It is a sitter who sends a careful message every day for four days, hears nothing back, quietly decides the owner does not want them, and stops.
| Kind of sit | Rhythm that usually works | What each message carries |
|---|---|---|
| Two to five nights, healthy pets, familiar routine | A message on arrival, then one a day | A photo, what they ate, how they slept |
| A holiday sit of one to three weeks | Daily for the first three days, then daily or every second day by agreement | Eating, toileting, exercise, anything different |
| Daily medication, or a pet recovering from surgery | A message at each agreed dose time on day one, then once a day confirming the doses given | The dose, the time it was given, how the animal took it |
| An anxious dog, or a cat that hides from strangers | Twice on the first day, then once a day | Where the animal is, whether it is eating, what settled it |
| A sit of a month or more | Daily for the first week, then two or three a week | A short summary, one photo, and anything to do with the house |
| The owner is overseas or at sea | One agreed window a day, plus a written rule for urgent contact | The usual content, plus a line saying no reply is needed |
| A rural or remote property with unreliable signal | An agreed check-in time, and an agreed meaning for silence | Confirmation the sitter reached signal, then the usual content |
A useful update is four lines long, not four paragraphs
- What they ate, and when.
- Toileting and exercise, in one sentence.
- One ordinary moment, with a photo.
- Anything different from yesterday, said plainly, even if it turns out to be nothing.
The photo is the part that gets opened, and the sentence about eating is the part that reassures, because appetite is the first thing to change in most animals that are unsettled or unwell. An update saying only that everything is fine, eleven days running, stops being read, and stops being useful later when you are both trying to work out which day the limp started. None of those four lines is a progress report on the lawns or the pool, which belong to the agreed task list rather than the daily message, and our guide to what a house sitter is responsible for covers where that line sits.
Say the bad news first, and say it the hour you notice it
A skipped meal, a limp, a vomit on the rug, a cracked window, a note from a neighbour. None of it improves by being saved for the evening message, and a homeowner should never hear about something in their own house from anyone before they hear it from their sitter. Leading with it also protects the sitter, because a problem reported at 9am is an incident and the same problem mentioned three days later is a decision to hide it.
Reporting is not the same as waiting. If an animal needs a vet, it goes to the vet, and the sitter does not sit on a message hoping for a reply from someone on a flight. That is exactly what the spending ceiling and the named vet in a written agreement are for, and our guides to who pays an emergency vet bill and giving medication during a sit cover the two situations where this comes up most. The RSPCA's guidance on preparing for an emergency includes an emergency animal authorisation form, which authorises another person to enter your home, care for your animal and make decisions on the animal's behalf, including veterinary care. It is worth filling in before you go, not after something happens.
No signal is the most Australian reason an update does not arrive
Mobile coverage across regional and rural Australia is patchy enough that the Australian Government is still measuring it. The National Audit of Mobile Coverage is drive testing around 180,000 km of regional and rural roads every year for three years, running until 30 June 2027, specifically to find the black spots that commercial coverage maps miss. On a property outside Dubbo, on the Eyre Peninsula or an hour past Katherine, a missed daily update is far more likely to be a dead spot than a problem with the pets.
So settle three things before the owner drives off. Where the signal actually is on the property, which is often the top of the driveway or one end of the verandah rather than the kitchen. Whether wi-fi calling or a messaging app works when the mobile network does not. And how long a silence has to run before it means something, which on a remote property might be a full day rather than a few hours.
When one side goes quiet, escalate slowly and in this order
| How long the silence has run | If you are the homeowner | If you are the sitter |
|---|---|---|
| The update is a few hours late | Nothing. Give it the evening. | Send it late rather than not at all, and say why in one line. |
| A full day past the agreed window | One message and one phone call, then wait. | One message and one call, and keep working to the notes you were left. |
| Two days, no contact in either direction | Ring the second number you took at handover, then the neighbour or local contact who holds a key and can call in. | Act inside the limits already agreed in writing: the named vet, the spending ceiling, the second contact. |
| No contact, and you have real reason to think the animals are not being cared for | Ring your local police station on its non-emergency line and ask for a welfare check, and let your usual vet clinic know the pets may arrive without you. | Ring the owner's emergency contact and the pet's usual vet clinic, and write down what you did and at what time. |
Most silences are a flat battery, a dead spot or somebody asleep, which is why the top of that ladder is deliberately slow. What makes the bottom of it work is the second number, taken at handover: a neighbour, an adult child or a friend in the same suburb who can be at the front door in twenty minutes. A sit without one leaves both people with nothing to do but keep ringing.
An owner in another time zone should agree a window, not a moment
A daily update timed for 7pm in Adelaide lands in the middle of the night for an owner in Europe, and the reply comes back while the sitter is asleep, so both sides feel ignored by someone who answered promptly. Pick a window in the sitter's day instead of a clock time in the owner's, and put in writing that no reply is expected. Our guide to time zones and Australian house sitting has the arithmetic between Sydney, Perth, London and New York.
What Sitterly does and does not do
Sitterly supports the connection. Homeowners and sitters remain responsible for their own arrangements. Members message each other directly on the platform, and every member carries a reply rating from one to five based on how quickly they respond, so a pattern of slow replies is visible before anything is agreed. There is a Report function if something goes wrong. Sitterly does not supervise sits and cannot make an update arrive.
Common questions about house sitting updates
- Is one update a day too many?
- For a routine sit with a healthy animal it is the usual expectation and takes about a minute to send. A homeowner who would rather hear less should say so at handover, because a sitter left to guess almost always guesses towards more.
- What if the homeowner never replies to a single update?
- Keep sending them at the agreed time. Silence from a homeowner on holiday usually means the arrangement is working, not that the messages are unwanted. Ask once whether they would prefer a different rhythm, then carry on. The run of daily messages is also the record you will both rely on if anything is disputed afterwards.
- Should a sitter post photos of the pets on social media?
- Not without asking, and not while the owners are away. A photo can show the inside of a house, a street sign or a location tag, and it tells anyone reading it that the owners are not home. Send the photos to the owner and let the owner decide what to publish.
- Does a camera in the house replace the daily update?
- No, and treating it that way is how trust breaks. A camera shows a hallway, not whether the cat ate. Any cameras should be disclosed before the sit is agreed, and the update should keep arriving regardless.
- Who sends the messages on the first and last days?
- The sitter sends one on arrival day once the animals are settled, and one on the final morning saying how the house was left and where the keys are. Both are the easiest to forget and the two most likely to be mentioned in a review.
Your next step
Write the update rhythm into the care notes before the next trip, in the same two lines as the feeding times, and take a second phone number while you are both standing in the kitchen. If you still need someone to send them, browse the sits that are open now, and how Sitterly works covers what happens between a first message and a confirmed sit.
