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.
Not with a Dogoos read, though. A read answers “how is he feeling”, not “what is that gait” — and Dogoos does not store the clip as a video. What it keeps is one still keepsake frame, and a still can't show a limp. Use the camera app for the symptom; let the journal carry the dates and the words.
Worth knowing. 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 takes that document apart section by section; what follows is the short version, and the limits worth knowing before you lean on it.
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
What it won't do
- Diagnose anything, or suggest a treatment
- Calculate a dose. Dogoos records it, never calculates it
- Pose as a clinical record — it is an owner-kept journal and says so
- Invent a section to look complete: no reads, no mood chart
- Empty the archive onto the page: fourteen notes, twelve reminders, twelve current medications, and a weight table of fourteen rows — though the curve above that table still plots every weigh-in you have ever logged
Honest by design
The parts it leaves out
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 is no mood chart — that section simply isn't printed. Reads the AI abstained on don't reach it either: only the ones that passed the quality gate are counted, so a month of unclear footage prints nothing rather than something.
Where the mood trend does appear, it introduces itself rather than posing as measurement: an AI-estimated trend from your own recorded reads, with the average model confidence printed next to it, and the flat admission that this is “owner-supplied context, not instrumentation”. Every page carries the same footer: “Journal kept by the owner in Dogoos — not veterinary advice.”
The interpreting belongs to the person with the degree.
On the day, and the week after
Do it before you're back in the car
Not veterinary advice. The Health Hub records what you observe and lays it out; it doesn't interpret any of it. Reminders are an aid: your vet's schedule is authoritative, the alarm is an inexact one, and delivery isn't guaranteed. 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 is not a medical record and never claims to be — even its reminder dates print with a line saying the practice's own records are the authoritative ones.
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, and it will be honest about the gap: where there's nothing, it prints “Nothing noted in the last 90 days” rather than padding the page. 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. There are a few more, and the web app page has the full list.
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
Open the web app 🦴
Free to use · The Health Hub and the vet summary are on every plan