Pet care guides
Practical, source-backed guidance on understanding changes in your pet, keeping records that are actually useful, and preparing for veterinary care. Written to be useful whether or not you use Patter.
The guides
What to track when your pet seems different
A six-part way to record a change: what changed, how it differs from your pet's normal, when it started, and when to stop tracking and call a veterinarian instead.
Pet appetite changes
What counts as a meaningful change when your pet eats more, less or differently: the five things to record at the bowl, the context that changes how they read, and when to call a veterinarian instead.
Pet water intake changes
How to notice and measure a real change in drinking, why wet and dry food change the picture on their own, and why there is no single number that decides whether a pet is drinking too much.
Dog vaccination schedule
Why no single date list fits every dog, what core and risk-based vaccines mean, what belongs in the record, and what to do when a date is overdue or the history is unknown.
Cat vaccination schedule
How a feline schedule is structured, why an indoor cat is still assessed rather than exempt, what to keep in the record, and why previous reactions matter.
How to prepare information for a vet visit
What veterinarians actually ask owners, why a written timeline beats recall in the exam room, and a checklist to work through the day before.
Pet weight and body condition
Why the number on the scale is a starting point: how weight, weight trend, body condition score and muscle condition score differ, and what is worth recording between visits.
How these guides are written
Every veterinary fact in these guides comes from an authoritative reference — currently the Merck Veterinary Manual, WSAVA, AAHA and the Cornell Feline Health Center — and each guide names and links its sources so you can check them, with the edition or year where the publisher states one. Those sources are independent of Patter.
What the guides add is organisation. Each one sets out a practical way to structure information that the underlying sources do not provide, and says where that structure is ours rather than an established veterinary assessment. Facts about what Patter does are kept in their own section, separate from the sourced material — and what Patter does not do is set out on Patter and your veterinarian.
These guides are about noticing, recording and preparing. None of them tells you what a change means, because that takes a veterinarian who can examine your animal. Where a guide describes how Patter handles the same information, health in Patter covers it in full.
Each guide shows when it was last reviewed. Reviewing means re-reading the sources, not assuming they still say what they said.