A pet care app for the owner, and for the sitter.
A pet care app has two users, and most are built for one. The owner needs the whole record: vaccinations with due dates, medications, feeding times, weight, vet visits, insurance. The person holding the leash next weekend needs a fraction of it, and needs it without a login they will forget. That gap, between the record and the hand-off, is the real test of a pet care app, and it is the same fit question that runs through the rest of our app examples: the job first, the tool second.
This page lays out the fields, the reminder rules that make a due date trustworthy, what a sitter should and should not see, and the three ways a sitter share can work: a code, a link, or an account.
See what a pet care app needs to recordThe short version
One record, two views.
A pet care app needs a profile per pet, a vaccination record with a due date on every entry, medications with dose, time and how to give them, a feeding schedule, a weight log, the vet's details and an emergency plan. Then it needs a sitter view that shows feeding, meds, routine and who to call, and nothing else, with every dose the sitter gives logged against a time. The rest of this page is what each field is for, with the vaccine intervals taken from the AAHA guidelines and the fees of a pet sitting marketplace for comparison.
The record
What a pet care app needs to record.
A dog care app and a cat's record share the same skeleton. Species changes the vaccine list and the feeding rules, not the shape of the record. Five groups of fields cover it.
The pet profile
Name, species, breed, sex, date of birth, a current photo, and the microchip number together with the registry it is enrolled in. The registry matters as much as the number: a scanner only gets a finder as far as the company that holds the chip, so the record should also note when you last confirmed your contact details there.
Vaccinations, with a due date on every entry
Each entry is the vaccine, the date it was given, who gave it, and when the next dose is due. The due date is a field, not a calculation done in your head, because core and noncore vaccines run on different intervals and rabies runs on whatever the law where you live says. The next section has the intervals.
Medications, with how to give them
Name, dose, the times of day, with food or without, how it is given (pill pocket, liquid, drops in the ear), start and end dates, the prescribing vet and refills left. Then, separately, a log of each dose actually given: by whom, at what time. The log is the field that makes a second carer safe. Without it, two people who both love the dog both give the pill.
Feeding, weight and body condition
The food, the amount, the times, where it is kept, which treats are allowed, and a never-feed list that covers both allergies and the ordinary things a pet must not eat. A weight log with a date on each entry turns into a trend the vet can read; a note on body condition alongside it is what the vet will ask about anyway.
Vet, insurance and the emergency plan
The regular clinic and a 24-hour emergency clinic, each with phone and address. The insurance policy number and the claims contact. A written treatment authorization and a spend limit for whoever is looking after the pet, so an emergency vet can act without reaching you first. A backup person who can decide if you cannot be reached. Adoption or purchase papers, the license and any pedigree go in as photos of the paper, the same way a home inventory app keeps receipts: the photo is the record, the folder is the index.
The minimum field list
- One profile per pet, with microchip number and registry
- Vaccinations: vaccine, date given, who gave it, next due
- Medications: dose, times, with or without food, how to give, end date
- Dose log: who gave what, and when
- Feeding schedule with amounts, and a never-feed list
- Weight log with a date on every entry
- Regular vet and emergency vet, with phone and address
- Insurance policy, treatment authorization and spend limit
- Emergency contacts, including a backup decision-maker
- Routine and quirks a stranger would need to know
Due dates
Vaccine due dates are not one interval.
The most common failure in a pet health tracker app is a single "annual shots" reminder. The intervals differ by vaccine, and one of them is set by law rather than by a vet. The 2022 AAHA canine vaccination guidelines, updated in 2024 to make leptospirosis a core vaccine, list distemper, adenovirus, parvovirus, leptospira and rabies as core for every dog, with parainfluenza often bundled in, and Lyme, Bordetella, canine influenza and rattlesnake toxoid as noncore, given on lifestyle and location. The schedule from their core and noncore vaccine table:
| Vaccine | Core or noncore | Initial series | Boosters after that |
|---|---|---|---|
| Distemper, adenovirus, parvovirus (with or without parainfluenza) | Core, all dogs | Puppies: at least 3 doses between 6 and 16 weeks, 2 to 4 weeks apart. Older dogs: 2 doses, 2 to 4 weeks apart. | One dose within a year of the initial series, then every 3 years. |
| Leptospira | Core, all dogs (since the 2024 update) | Two doses, 2 to 4 weeks apart. | One dose within a year of the initial series, then annually. |
| Rabies | Core, all dogs | As required by law. | As required by law. The interval is a state or local rule. |
| Lyme, Bordetella, canine influenza | Noncore: lifestyle and location | Two doses, 2 to 4 weeks apart. Bordetella also comes as a single intranasal or oral dose. | Annually. |
| Rattlesnake toxoid | Noncore: exposure risk | Varies with body weight and exposure risk. | Varies. |
Intervals from the AAHA core and noncore vaccines for dogs table, published with the 2022 guidelines and updated in 2024. Your vet sets the schedule for your dog; AAHA's own rule for overdue or unknown histories is "when in doubt, vaccinate".
Cats have their own list. The 2020 AAHA/AAFP feline vaccination guidelines name feline herpesvirus, calicivirus, panleukopenia, rabies and, for cats under a year old, feline leukemia as core, with Chlamydia felis, Bordetella and feline leukemia for older cats as noncore. The app design lesson is the same for both species: store an interval per vaccine, per pet, and compute the due date from the last dose that was actually given. That is also the engine underneath a plant care app, with watering intervals in place of boosters. The difference on this page is the hand-off.
The hand-off
What should the sitter see, and what should they not?
A sitter needs feeding, medications, the routine, the vet's number, permission to act in an emergency, and a place to log what they gave. They do not need the insurance policy, the purchase papers or three years of weight readings, and giving them everything is how the one field that matters gets missed. A vet visit is a third view again. Filter the record by who is holding the phone:
Try it
One pet record, three views. Who sees what?
Switch roles to filter the same sixteen fields down to what that person actually needs.
16 of 16 fields · Everything. The owner view is the full record.
- Name, species, breed, sex, date of birth, photoIdentifies the pet on every screen and on a lost-pet notice.
- Microchip number and the registry it is enrolled inA scanner gets a finder as far as the registry. The registry has to have your current details.
- Vaccination record with a due date on every entryBoarding, daycare and groomers ask for it, and boosters run on different intervals.
- Medications: name, dose, times, with food or not, how to give itThe instructions a second person needs to give a dose correctly.
- Dose log: who gave what, and whenPrevents double-dosing between two carers. The sitter writes it, the owner reads it.
- Feeding: food, amount, times, where it is keptThe most-used screen in any hand-off.
- Allergies and a never-feed listThe one field a sitter must never have to ask about.
- Weight log and body condition notesA trend over months. A vet question, not a sitter one.
- Regular vet and 24-hour emergency vet: name, phone, addressWhere to go, decided before there is a reason to go.
- Treatment authorization and a spend limit for the sitterLets an emergency clinic treat without reaching you first.
- Insurance policy number and claims contactNeeded for the claim, not for the visit.
- Routine and quirks: walks, crate, commands, fears, escape riskWhat makes the stay go smoothly, and what makes it go wrong.
- Emergency contacts: you, and a backup who can decide if you cannotThe sitter's second call.
- Vet visit history, test results and documentsThe history a new vet asks for first.
- Parasite prevention: flea, tick, heartworm, with the next due dateMonthly items that slip. A sitter only needs the one that falls due during the stay.
- Adoption or purchase papers, license, pedigreeProof of ownership. Photos of the paper are enough.
The dose log is the one field that goes both ways: the sitter writes it, the owner reads it, and the next reminder is computed from it. If a pet care app for owners cannot attribute a dose to a person and a time, a shared note does the same job for free. The sitter view exists to make that log the first screen the sitter sees, with everything they need to act on it one tap away and nothing else in the way.
Booking vs. the record
Pet sitting app, or pet care app?
A pet sitting app in the marketplace sense solves a different problem: finding, booking and paying a sitter. Rover's US help center, read on 20 September 2026, describes an 11% booking fee paid by the owner at checkout and a 20% service fee taken from the pet care provider, who keeps 80%, with different fees in California. See Rover's service fee page. That is the price of the marketplace: trust, payment and a guarantee. What it does not do is replace the hand-off. The sitter you book there still needs the feeding times, the pill schedule and the emergency vet, and the profile fields a marketplace collects are the marketplace's, not yours.
The same split runs the other way for a sitter or walker with twenty clients. Their dog care app is a set of per-client records with exactly the sitter-view fields above, plus a log the owner can read back. Whether they found each client on a marketplace or on a lamppost does not change the record.
Picking an approach
A pet care app for owners, compared with the alternatives.
None of the fields above needs software. The trouble is that each of the usual ways of keeping them makes at least one of the important ones impossible to get consistently.
| Approach | Sitter sees only what they need | Dose logged with who and when | Due-date reminders | Several pets, several carers | Who maintains it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paper sheet on the fridge | Yes | No | No | one copy, one house | you, every time |
| Shared note or document | No | if they type it | No | yes | you |
| Pet sitting marketplace | their profile fields | messages and photos | No | per booking | the platform |
| Vet clinic app or portal | No | No | the clinic's own | that clinic's patients | the clinic |
| Pet health tracker app | sometimes, one household login | Yes | Yes | usually | the vendor, fixed fields |
| Custom-built pet care app | Yes | Yes | Yes | whatever your household needs | you |
Free vs. paid
Is there a free pet care app?
For one pet and one person, yes, and a free pet health tracker app is a fine place to start. The cost shows up with the second carer: free tiers are usually a single login, so sharing means handing over the whole account, and the dose log cannot say who gave what. Paid trackers, a clinic portal, or an app built around your own household each fix that differently, and none of the build-it-yourself routes is free. Newly, for instance, has no free plan and starts at $25 a month, which is the honest comparison against a paid tracker's subscription, not against a free one.
When to build your own
Building a pet care app around your own household.
The reason to build your own pet care app is rarely price. It is fit. A household with a diabetic cat on twice-daily insulin, two dogs on different diets and a rotating cast of sitters, walkers and grandparents does not fit a single-pet tracker with one login, and bending it to fit is how doses get missed. That gap, a routine no off-the-shelf tool quite matches, is what Newly is for: describe the pets, the fields, the sitter view and who is allowed to log a dose, and it builds a real native app around that routine rather than around a vendor's template.
Two product facts to plan the hand-off around, both from the docs on shipping to TestFlight: the iOS build is signed and uploaded to TestFlight, inside App Store Connect, under your own Apple Developer Program membership, and v2 does not produce Android builds. If your regular sitter carries an Android phone, that settles the share method for you: a link that opens in a browser, or a printed card, not an app they would have to install.
Sources
Where the specifics came from.
Four things on this page come from a primary source rather than general practice:
FAQ
Pet care apps, answered.
A profile per pet (name, species, breed, sex, date of birth, microchip number and the registry it is enrolled in), vaccinations with the date given and the next due date, medications with dose, times and how to give them, a log of every dose actually given, a feeding schedule with amounts and a never-feed list, a weight log, the regular and emergency vet's details, the insurance policy, and an emergency plan with a backup contact. The AAHA vaccination guidelines are the reference for which vaccines are core and how often boosters fall due.
Start with the record, then the hand-off.
A pet care app earns its place on the day someone else has the leash. Get the fields and the sitter view right on paper first, then look at what other people have built around routines like yours.