Bring the packaging
If food is any part of the conversation, the label answers more than you can from memory.
Vet visit prep
Walk in with the answers
The median UK consult is 9 minutes 49 seconds. Here's what to write down before you go, and what Dogoos hands over for you.
The clock in the room
Nine minutes, forty-nine seconds
That is the median first-opinion consult in UK small-animal practice, in a study that timed everything from a 51-second appointment to one that ran 36 minutes 45 (Robinson et al., Vet Record, 2014). Yours might be one of the long ones. Prepare for the median.
It isn't short because anyone is careless. It's short because that's the slot, and a real chunk of it goes on the one thing only you can supply. When it started. Whether it's getting worse. What he weighed in March. The minutes spent reconstructing that out of memory are the minutes you paid for.
So arrive with the history already written. None of this needs an app; a scrap of paper works. Dogoos exists so you're not doing it in the car park.
Where a ten-minute consult goes
- Reconstructing it“When did it start?” “A while ago?”
- The historyWeight in March, what changed, what you have tried
- The examinationThe part only your vet can do
- What happens nextThe bit you actually came for
Before you go
Write it down while it's still true
Memory edits. By Thursday, “it started the Tuesday after we changed his food” has become “a couple of weeks ago, maybe”. Four things, written the day you notice them, cover most appointments.
Dates, not adjectives
The day you first noticed it, and roughly how often since. “Three times this week, always after a walk” tells a vet something. “A while now” doesn't.
The new food, the new floor cleaner
A different route, a house guest, the heating going on, the switch to the cheaper kibble. You're not deciding which one matters. You're handing over the variables so someone qualified can.
What you've already tried, and for how long
Whether anything shifted, and whether you stopped before it had a chance to. It keeps the appointment off ground you covered a fortnight ago.
The question you'd hate to leave without asking
Write it at the top and ask it first. Consults end sooner than you expect, and the really good question tends to arrive in the car.
Filming it
The limp that stops at reception
A fortnight of head-shaking stops dead at the door, and the limp evens out on a tiled floor with the adrenaline up. If the thing worrying you is visible, film it at home on your phone's ordinary camera: a few steady seconds, the whole dog in frame, not just the leg.
Use your ordinary camera for this rather than a Dogoos read. A read answers “how is he feeling”, not “what is that gait”, and what it keeps is one still photo, which can't show a limp. Film the symptom with the camera app, and let the journal carry the dates and the words.
Good to know. A Health Hub note is text and a date. There's no photo slot in it. Videos and photos stay in your camera roll, so bring the phone as well as the page.
The handover
One tap, and ninety days of journal becomes a PDF
The Health Hub keeps the boring, load-bearing things: weigh-ins, medications exactly as your vet wrote them, reminder dates for vaccination, worming and flea & tick, and notes in your own words. Tap Share PDF and it becomes a document that leaves through the ordinary share sheet, so it can be in the practice's inbox before you've got the lead on. The Health Hub page goes through that document section by section; the short version is below.
What it puts on the page
- Who the dog is: breed, age, sex, neutered, latest weight
- The weight table, and a curve once there are two weigh-ins
- The medications he is on today, under the heading “Dose (as recorded by owner)”
- Your dated notes and symptoms from the last 90 days
- Reminder dates, with the practice's own records named as authoritative
- The last 30 days of mood reads, the one section you didn't type yourself
Good to know
- It never diagnoses or suggests a treatment. That's your vet's part
- It records a dose exactly as your vet gave it, and never works one out
- It's an owner-kept journal, and says so on every page
- Empty sections stay empty rather than padded: no reads, no mood chart
- It prints the most recent fourteen notes, twelve reminders, twelve current medications and fourteen weigh-ins, and the curve above the weight table still plots every weigh-in you've ever logged
90 daysof your own dated notes and symptom observations.
30 daysof mood reads, as a labelled trend (omitted entirely if you have none).
On your phoneThe PDF is generated on the device, from your journal. Nothing is sent anywhere to build it.
Nothing padded
It only prints what you've written
A summary that pads is worse than no summary, because it spends a vet's attention on filler. So if you've logged nothing in three months, the notes section says “Nothing noted in the last 90 days” and stops. If you've never taken a read, there's no mood chart; that section simply isn't printed. And only reads the app could see clearly are counted.
Where the mood trend does appear, it says what it is: an AI-estimated trend from your own recorded reads, with the average confidence printed next to it. Every page carries the same footer: “Journal kept by the owner in Dogoos. Not veterinary advice.”
The interpreting is your vet's job.
On the day, and the week after
Do it before you're back in the car
Log the weight they took
They'll weigh him anyway. Type that number in when you get home and it lands on the same curve the next summary prints.
Record the dose as given
Word for word off the label, before the label goes in the bin. It comes back out in the summary under “Dose (as recorded by owner)”.
Set the recheck now
The follow-up, the booster, the next worming date. Choose a time in the phone app and it rings when it's due.
Not veterinary advice. The Health Hub records what you observe and lays it out for your vet. Reminders are an aid: your vet's schedule is the one to trust, and an alarm can arrive a little late. Worried right now? Ring your vet. Out of hours, every UK practice provides an emergency number.
Questions, answered
Before you print it
My vet already has records. What does this add?
The ninety days between appointments. Their file has what happened in the room; this has the weigh-in you did on the bathroom scales, the note you wrote the night he wouldn't settle, the dose as it's actually being given, and thirty days of mood reads. It's your journal, not a medical record, and its reminder dates print with a line saying the practice's own records are the ones that count.
Do I need a subscription for it?
No. The journal, the reminders and the summary are free on every plan including the free Pup plan, and building one never spends a read. Here's everything that's free.
I only started logging last week. Is it worth printing?
Yes. Where there's nothing, it prints “Nothing noted in the last 90 days” rather than padding the page, and a week of dated notes still beats “a while ago” when the clock in the room is running.
Can I do all this on a laptop?
Yes. app.dogoos.com opens the same journal with a real keyboard, and the summary arrives in your downloads as an ordinary PDF to print or attach. Two things from this page stay on the phone: live camera reads, and the alarms. A browser can hold the dates but it can't ring. See what’s available on the web.
My partner takes him to the vet. Can they get the summary?
Yes, if you share a household. One household means one pack, one health journal and one read history across everyone's own account, so whoever is in the room has the same document. Invite codes are single-use and expire after 24 hours. How households work.
Start the journal today, not the night before
Explore the Health Hub
Discover the notes and records that go into your vet summary.