Claw clipping was in the health log, with no due date: nothing told you Nanga was at 23 days. And the blood panel report slept in a drawer, with no value followed from one year to the next. Two things arrive together, because they belong together: care that comes back, and the blood panel, which is one of them.
Care that comes back
- A rhythm, "every N days since the last one". For six kinds of care: Claw clipping, Deworming, Teeth brushing, Massage, Chiropractic, Blood panel. The rhythm applies to the whole pack ("every 21 days"), with exceptions by dog ("Nanga: every 14 days", shorter or longer; "Not for this dog" silences it). A rhythm can be paused. On the phone: Manage › Kennel › Care rhythms. On the website: Settings › Kennel, "Care rhythms".
- The last care is the one in the health log. The count starts from the most recent visit of the same kind for that dog. A dog with no care noted at all is due right away, and the screen says so: "never noted".
- On Today, "Care due": one card per kind of care, naming the dogs ("Nanga (23 d) · Hunza (never noted)"). "Done for all N" notes the care in the health log for each of them, dated today; "Choose" lets you tick the ones that were done. It works offline. On the website, the dashboard's Care card has the same "Care due" and "Done for all N".
- On the dog's page, Health tab, "Next care": "Claw clipping · 6 Nov · Deworming · due". On the phone as on the website.
- An email ahead of time, in the morning: "Claw clip due for Nanga". The lead time can be set (two days before the due date by default, from zero to seven).
- Only active dogs have care due: a retired dog, a dog that has died or a dog lent to you has none.
The blood panel
- The dog's page › Health › "Lab tests", on the phone as on the website. A report: its date, the lab or clinic, a photo or PDF of the report, a note, and the values you choose to follow, not all of them: the ones your vet told you to watch. Haematocrit, creatinine, CK, ALT… are picked from a list; any other name is written as it appears on the report. For each value: the figure, the unit, and the ranges printed by the lab, if you have them.
- A value opens its chart: its figures report after report, and in a green band the lab's ranges for each report. A name written several ways ("Creatinine", "CREA", "Kreatinin") makes a single chart.
- "outside the lab's range", in a caution colour, when a value falls outside the ranges printed on that report. Under every chart and every report: "The app does not say whether it is normal for a sled dog."
- The "Blood panel" rhythm counts from the latest report entered in Lab tests, and closes when you enter the next one. It has no "Done" button: the dog's name leads to its page.
- A report can be corrected and deleted for good. It is entered online; it can then be read without a network.
What others see, and what never leaves the kennel
Rhythms, care due and lab reports are read by your kennel's members. Setting a rhythm stays with the owner: it is a rule that sends emails to people other than them. Marking care "Done", entering, correcting or deleting a report: the owner, the handlers and the kennel's vet, as for the rest of the health log. The email goes to the owner, the handlers and the vet, except to those who have muted the kennel's reminders for themselves.
The reports stay in a private space of your kennel. Nothing goes to the club, a public page or a share card. A lab report does not follow a dog that is sold or given away: its lab tests stay in your kennel, the new one does not receive them.
What it does not do
- No rhythm is set for you. The pack starts with no rhythm; you set your own.
- No rhythm for vaccines. They have their due date, set by the vet, and their reminder.
- No fixed date ("the 1st of the month"): only "since the last one".
- No "normal" or "abnormal", no threshold of the app's own, no comparison between dogs.
- No unit conversion. A chart is drawn in the unit of its latest value; a value written in another unit is counted and flagged ("1 value in another unit is not drawn"), never converted.
- No automatic reading of the report. You copy the values you follow.
- No notification for a value outside the range.
Four choices made against the obvious
Never "abnormal". A lab's ranges are general: a value outside them doesn't tell you, on its own, whether it's a problem for this particular dog at its workload. The app only knows the ranges the lab printed; it says whether the value falls outside them, nothing more. Reading them is the vet's job.
No conversion. Going from one unit to another needs, for each test, a factor the report does not give, and would invent a precision it does not have. Better a flagged value than a wrong value on the chart.
The care in the health log is the care. There is no last-care date kept on the side: the health log visit is what counts. Care noted straight in the health log, without going through "Done", resets the count too. Two places would have ended up saying two things.
The blood panel isn't ticked. For the other kinds of care, "Done" is enough. A blood panel isn't an action you tick: it is done when its values are there. So the rhythm closes when the report is entered, not on a button.