A Pet Vaccination and Health Tracker You'll Be Glad You Kept

Pet medical records have a peculiar way of existing everywhere and nowhere: a card from the vet in a drawer, a text message with a reminder, a receipt with the name of a treatment on it, and a memory of a conversation about when the next booster is due. It works right up until the moment you need it quickly.

The free Pet Health tracker puts vaccines, due dates, vets and reminders into one clean dashboard.

The moments you'll actually need this

• Boarding or a kennel, which almost always requires proof of current vaccination.
• An emergency vet who isn't your usual one and knows nothing about your animal.
• Moving house or changing practice, when records have to be transferred.
• Travel, where paperwork requirements are strict and deadlines are unforgiving.
• A new symptom, where the history of what's been treated before genuinely changes the diagnosis.

Due dates are the whole point

Vaccination schedules are easy to follow in the first year, when everything is frequent and memorable, and easy to lose afterwards, when boosters are annual or every three years. A tracker with the next due date visible turns a thing you'd forget into a thing you'll see. Most lapsed vaccinations are lapsed for exactly this reason.

Record more than vaccines

Weight over time is quietly one of the most useful pieces of data an owner can keep, because gradual change is invisible day to day and obvious in a list. Alongside it: flea and worm treatments with dates, any medication and dose, allergies, and what the vet said. Notes written the same day are considerably more accurate than notes reconstructed in a waiting room.

Half of what a vet asks in an emergency is history. Having it written down is the difference between a guess and an answer.

Multiple pets, one system

With more than one animal the schedules diverge quickly and the mental tracking fails almost immediately. One dashboard covering all of them, with each pet's next due date visible together, is the version that survives. It also means whoever looks after them while you're away has a single link rather than a phone call.

Setting it up

• Add each pet with breed, date of birth, microchip number and vet practice.
• Enter the last known vaccination for each, and calculate the next due date.
• Add flea and worm treatments with their intervals.
• Log current weight, then again at each vet visit.
• Keep the vet's out-of-hours number in the same place. You'll want it at a bad moment.

For the broader picture, profiles, breed info, owner details and a gallery, there's the free Pet Profiles Hub. Duplicate the Pet Health tracker and start with the next due date.