Sharing a dog
Two homes, one dog
Whether dinner has already gone in today. What the other house wrote in the journal on Tuesday. Whether he's genuinely lost weight across a fortnight neither of you saw whole. A household puts the dog's whole record on both phones, and neither of you ever holds the other's password.
The handover
The dog is fine. The handover isn't.
Sunday evening. He comes back with his harness, his blanket and no information whatsoever. He was quiet on Friday, apparently. He's eaten, probably. Somebody mentioned the stairs. You now own the next four days of a dog whose last three you have to reconstruct from a text message.
Then it runs the other way on Thursday, and the half of the week you wrote down goes out of the door with him. Two people each keeping half a record is not the same thing as a record. It's how a dog gets his dinner twice on a Tuesday and not at all on a Thursday, and how a fortnight of slowly going off his food reads as a normal week to each of you in turn.
It costs you at the vet counter, where "a week or two?" is the only answer you have and it is worth nothing.
Setting it up
Nobody has to share a password
The obvious fix is one login on two phones, and it costs you everything that makes the app yours: one name on the hello screen, one theme, one streak, and every read in the history filed under whichever of you first typed the password. Share a dog with someone you no longer share an address with and that last part stops being cosmetic.
A household is the other answer. You each sign in as yourselves and the dog is what's shared — one pack, one read history, one keepsake album, one health journal, on every member's phone the moment anything lands.
One of you becomes the owner
Settings → Household → Create our household. Whoever creates it owns it, and the owner is the only person who can mint invite codes or remove a member. If the owner ever leaves, ownership passes to a remaining member automatically — the server picks, nobody gets to nominate.
One code, one use, twenty-four hours
The owner mints an invite code, and it's a one-shot key to the family's whole private archive — every read, every keepsake, every health note. Exactly one is ever live: minting a fresh one deletes the last, using it deletes it on the spot, and any change to who's in the house deletes it too. Everyone already in is told the moment a code is used, so a leaked code can't add somebody quietly.
The other house brings its own dog in
The switch on the join screen says Bring my dogs, reads & health with me, and it starts on. Leave it on and their reads and journal arrive — along with their profile for the dog, as a second dog, because nothing matches two profiles up. Read the warning below before anybody taps it.
Two profiles for one dog stay two dogs. A dog profile is identified by the phone that made it, so if you've both already set him up, the household ends up holding both — each with its own reads, its own weight curve and its own journal. Nothing merges them, and both count against the dog limit. Decide which one is the real record, then delete the other from the pack: it goes for the whole household at once.
Two houses, one dog, no shared password
- Each of you signs inYour own account. Nobody hands over a password
- One of you invitesA code that lasts a day and works once
- The dog is sharedReads, photos and the health journal, both ways
- You stay separateYour plan, your allowance and your settings are yours
Shared and separate
Both houses see the dog. Neither sees your account.
The pack, the read history, the album and the journal live in the household. Bones, streak, theme and quiz scores stay in your account — there is no shared wallet for anyone to raid, and no way for one house to spend the other's daily read.
What never crosses over: your sign-in, your theme, your bones, your streak, your quiz scores. Your first name does — it's what the members list shows and what the Captured by Alex label reads. Nothing else about you travels with it.
The honest limit
The parts that stay stubbornly personal
Today, reads aren't pooled. Each of you reads on your own account's allowance, which on the free plan works in your favour: two homes means two free reads a day on the same dog, both landing in the same history. If one of you subscribes, the extra daily reads and the paid features belong to that account. The other house carries on at whatever plan it's on.
Dogs are the awkward one. Every dog in the household counts against the dog limit of whoever is adding, and the free plan's limit is one. So a household already holding two profiles — his, and the duplicate you both made — leaves a free member unable to add anything at all; they get the upgrade screen instead of the form. Somebody on a paid plan has to do the adding.
What the server settles
- Who is in the household. Your phone can't talk itself in.
- Who a read belongs to — the rules refuse one that isn't authored as you.
- The five-person cap, checked inside the transaction that adds you.
- Which invite code is alive: exactly one, deleted the instant it's used or anybody's membership changes.
What it won't do
- Pool reads, or stretch one subscription across two houses.
- Merge two profiles of the same dog.
- Let one member delete the photo files another member captured.
- Diagnose the limp. A household makes the history complete; your vet reads it.
At the vet
The appointment only one of you can get to
Someone has to take the afternoon off, and it's rarely the person who noticed the thing. Whoever ends up in the room is carrying both halves of the week — the weigh-ins you logged and the three loose stools they logged, each under its own date, in one list.
One tap builds the vet visit summary on the phone: the weight curve, current medications, vaccination and reminder status, 90 days of notes and the last 30 days of mood reads. It's made on the device, so it works in a waiting room with one bar of signal.
And the line that doesn't move. Dogoos records what you observed and the dose your vet gave you, in your vet's words. It records it, never calculates it, and it never interprets a symptom. The stairs are a vet's call, not an app's.
Questions, answered
The questions that come up when it's actually two of you
We've both already made a profile for him. What happens when we join up?
You get two of him. A dog profile is identified by the phone that created it, so there's nothing to match them by: both arrive in the shared pack, each carrying its own reads, weight history and journal, and both count against the dog limit. Work out which one holds the fuller record, then delete the other in the app — the pack is shared, so it goes for everyone at once.
He's at mine Monday to Thursday. Does the app need to know that?
No. A household is a group of accounts, not an address, and nothing in it asks where anybody lives or whose week it is. What makes it work across two houses is that every entry carries its own date: meals against a day and a slot, weigh-ins and notes against a date, reads against the moment they were taken. Whoever opens it sees one continuous week rather than two halves.
Can I see who logged what?
For reads, yes — open one and it says Captured by Alex underneath, and your own say nothing. For the journal, no: a weight, a note, a meal or a walk lands in the shared list with its date and no name on it. Medications are recorded as a course too — the name, the dose in your vet's words, how often — not as a tick each time one goes in. So "did anyone give him the tablet?" is still a text message.
We've split up. Who keeps the dog's history?
The household does. Anything that moved in when you joined belongs to it from that moment, and leaving doesn't peel your half back out — your dogs, your reads, your keepsake photos and your health notes stay. The one exception is being the last person out, which carries the whole thing home to you and closes the household. If the owner is the one leaving, ownership passes to a remaining member automatically.
Can I keep part of the journal private?
No. Everyone in a household reads all of it: weights, medications, notes, meals, walks and reminders. There's no per-entry privacy and no half-membership, and taking a read out of the mood history removes it for everyone, with nobody able to put it back. Share a household with the people you'd already talk to about your dog's health — and if something in the journal worries you, that conversation is with a qualified vet.
Can we add the dog walker, or my mum on Wednesdays?
Yes, if they have their own Dogoos account and there's room — five people is the hard cap, counted inside the join itself, so a sixth never gets in. Be clear what you're handing over: a member sees every read, every keepsake and the entire health journal. The owner can remove them whenever, but what they added while they were in stays with the household, and only they can ever delete the photos they took.
Two houses, one dog,
one record between you.
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