How to share your pet’s medical records with a sitter, a family member or a vet
Most people do this by photographing a page and sending it. That works once. The problem is everything after once — the list changes, and the photograph does not.
Decide what the person actually needs
Different people need different slices of the same history, and handing over all of it to everybody is both unnecessary and, for anything with your address or your spending on it, unwise.
A sitter or a dog walker
- Feeding: what, how much, when.
- Medication: the drug, the dose, the times, and what to do about a missed one.
- Allergies, and anything the animal must not be given.
- The microchip number, in case it goes missing on their watch.
- Your practice, its number, and the out-of-hours clinic.
- How to reach you, and who to call if they cannot.
They do not need your invoices, your insurance policy, or six years of clinical notes.
A family member who shares the care
Everything above, plus the ability to record what they have done — which is the point. Two people looking after one animal without a shared record is how a dog gets its tablet twice in an evening, or not at all because each assumed the other had done it.
A veterinary practice
- Vaccination dates, with the products.
- Current medication, with doses.
- Known allergies and adverse reactions.
- Recent test results, if you have them.
- Weight history, which tells them more than a single weight does.
The problem with sending a copy
A photograph, a PDF or a printout has two failure modes, and they are the same two every time:
- It goes stale immediately. The dose changes, a vaccination is given, a new allergy is found — and the copy in somebody else’s phone still says what it said in March.
- It cannot be taken back. Once an image of your animal’s medication list and your home address is in a camera roll, it stays there long after that person stopped looking after your animal.
Neither matters much for one weekend with a trusted neighbour. Both matter for a paid sitter, an ex-partner, or anybody you will not see again.
Share access, not copies
The alternative is to give somebody access to the record itself, scoped to what they need, that you can withdraw. What to look for:
- Per-person permissions, not one shared password. A shared login cannot be revoked for one person without locking out everybody.
- Separated concerns — being able to log medication should not require being able to see costs.
- Revocable, immediately, without changing anything for anybody else.
- Current by construction, so what they see is what is true now, not what was true when you sent it.
Moving to a new practice
Ask the new practice to request the records from the old one. They do this routinely and it is the most complete route, because it moves the clinical file rather than your summary of it. It can take several days, which is the catch: if the first appointment is sooner than that, bring your own copy as well. Turning up with dates, doses and allergies written down is worth more than turning up with an apology for not having them.
How PetHealth Pro does it
You invite a person by email and choose what they can see and do. A sitter can log medication without seeing invoices; a family member can add records; a vet can read the history. Permissions are per person and revocable, so removing somebody changes nothing for anybody else. Because they are looking at the record rather than a copy of it, it is current.
Free for two animals, no card required. Open an account, or read about sharing and the rest of it. What is collected, and what deliberately is not, is set out in the privacy policy.