Pet Care Log

Five columns, one animal

Date. Feeding. Walk or play, medication, vet notes. Between fifteen and twenty-five rows to a page, with the pet's name at the top, so a household with three animals in it does not end up with three ambiguous sheets on the fridge.

The vet notes column is the widest. That is deliberate; it is the one that gets used properly.

Feeding, when more than one person feeds

This is the column that pays for the whole sheet.

An animal fed twice because two people each thought the other had forgotten is not a rare event, it is the normal condition of any household with more than one adult in it. Overfeeding is a genuine welfare problem in cats and small dogs, and it happens by kindness rather than neglect. A pencil mark in a box ends the argument permanently.

Medication

Write the time, not just a tick.

Most veterinary medicines have an interval as well as a dose, and "twice daily" means roughly twelve hours apart rather than whenever you next remember. For anything long-term — thyroid tablets, insulin, epilepsy medication — a written record is the difference between a guess and an answer when the vet asks how the last month went.

Walk and play

Useful for a puppy on restricted exercise, for an older dog whose stamina is changing, and for tracking whether the cat is actually playing or just being talked about.

Note duration rather than "yes". A ten-minute lead walk and an hour on the beach are the same tick and very different days, and if the vet later asks about exercise levels you will want the numbers.

Where it earns its keep

Boarding and pet sitters, who need the routine and need to leave a record of what they did. New puppies and kittens, where feeding and toileting and the vaccination schedule all need tracking at the same time. Recovery after surgery. Multi-pet households, especially where one animal is on a special diet and the others are not.

And any chronic condition at all. A diabetic cat's sheet, filled in for six weeks, is worth more to a vet than any amount of recollection.

Taking it to the vet

Bring the pages. A consultation is short and memory is unreliable, and "she has been off her food since about the fourteenth, and drinking more since the tenth" is a clinical history rather than an impression.

Print a month at a time and clip it inside a cupboard door where everyone who feeds the animal will see it.