What actually belongs in your pet's medical record (and who asks for what)

Ask ten owners where their dog’s vaccination record is and most will say some version of “the vet has it.” That is true, and it doesn’t help much. The vet has their record of their visits. It does not include the shot the shelter gave before you adopted, or the course of antibiotics from the emergency hospital on the far side of town, or the weight you took at home last month, or the microchip registry your pet was enrolled with by a rescue in another country.

The other common answer is the folder: a manila envelope in a kitchen drawer with fourteen pieces of paper in it, filed in the order they arrived. It is a real record, and it fails when it is needed, because emergencies do not happen at home.

First the reference: what a pet’s medical record is made of, and who asks for which part.

What belongs in a pet’s medical record?

Three of those are left out of almost every home record, and they cost you most when they’re missing. One is the adverse-reaction line, because nobody writes down the thing that went wrong two years ago. Another is the registry behind the microchip number, because the number alone is meaningless without knowing which database holds it. AAHA’s universal pet microchip lookup tool exists to answer that question, but it will not help if your contact details in that registry are three addresses out of date. The third is the after-hours hospital, which people tend to look up for the first time in the worst ten minutes of the year.

Which documents does each situation need?

Take the international row seriously, and don’t take pet-travel rules from a blog post, including this one. The requirements depend on the pair of countries, they change, and if you get them wrong your animal can be refused at the border. Start at the government authority. The US also has separate rules for bringing a dog into the country, run by the CDC, which since August 2024 has required all imported dogs to be microchipped and at least six months old.

Core vs non-core vaccines

This section covers the categories only. Intervals are set by your veterinarian and, for rabies, by local law, which varies by country, state and municipality. Nothing here is veterinary advice. The week-by-week timing the guidelines describe for puppies and kittens is laid out in puppy and kitten vaccination schedules.

The category system comes from the WSAVA Vaccination Guidelines Group, which publishes global guidance, and from two regional bodies in the US: the AAHA canine vaccination guidelines for dogs and the 2020 AAHA/AAFP feline vaccination guidelines for cats.

The “core” list changes over time. In a 2024 update to its 2022 canine guidelines, AAHA moved the leptospirosis vaccine to core for most dogs in the US, having previously classed it as non-core. AAHA’s own announcement is the primary source, and the classification applies to the US, not globally. Because of changes like this one, check the current guideline instead of trusting anything written on a fixed date, including this table.

Why does the paper folder fail?

It fails for two reasons. The obvious one is location. The folder lives at home; the emergency happens in a car park, on a walk, at a kennel, in a clinic you have never been to. A record you cannot reach is no use to anyone.

The second is structure, and it does more damage. A folder is append-only and unsorted. “When was the last lepto booster?” requires reading every sheet in it. “Has she ever reacted to a vaccine?” requires remembering that the reaction was written on the back of a discharge note from 2023. The paper is a pile of source documents. A vet wants the answer, in a form they can scan in seconds while doing four other things.

Photos of documents in a camera roll fail the same way. The information is there but hard to find, filed between thousands of unrelated pictures and a screenshot of a parking receipt.

What does a 20-second record require?

Here is the test. You are standing at a counter, someone in scrubs is waiting, and you have about twenty seconds before you start apologising. That test implies four constraints, and most apps fail at least one.

First, it has to work with no signal and no login. Veterinary waiting rooms are often concrete boxes with terrible reception, and what ruins the twenty seconds is a login screen followed by a password reset email you cannot receive.

Second, it has to produce one document. A single PDF with vaccinations, medications, weight, and history can be handed over, emailed ahead, or printed. Fourteen photos in a camera roll can’t.

Third, it has to answer the question directly. “Next due” is more useful than “here is the certificate.”

Fourth, it has to keep the original. A structured record that has lost its source document cannot settle a dispute with a kennel or an insurer. Keep both: the parsed fields and the scan they came from.

Pawza is our attempt at a record that meets all four. You photograph a vet document and Apple Vision reads the text on your device. With Pawza Pro on iOS 26 or later and a device that supports Apple Intelligence, an on-device model turns it into fields (visit date, vet and clinic, vaccinations, medications, diagnoses, weight, next-due date), which you review and correct before anything is saved. Each record can hold up to 10 photos or PDFs, so the original can sit beside the fields. Pawza tracks weight as a trend over time and can remind you on the day a vaccine is due. The free Emergency Card keeps allergies, current medications, insurance, and microchip details on one screen, with a call button for your vet, the emergency clinic, and a backup contact, and it works offline. With Pro, the Vet Visit PDF puts medications, diet, vaccinations, weight, symptoms, and recent care into one document. There is no Pawza account and no Pawza server; records stay on the device, with optional sync through your own iCloud. Our transparency page lists what every app declares, field by field.

It has limits. It is iPhone and iPad only. Apple Intelligence auto-fill needs Pro and iOS 26 or later on an eligible device; everywhere else you get on-device text recognition and fill in the fields yourself. The Vet Visit PDF is a Pro feature too. Free covers one pet, and Pro is $2.99/month or $19.99/year, each starting with a 7-day free trial, or $39.99 once, with Family Sharing on every Pro plan.

PetDesk does something Pawza cannot. It connects to participating veterinary clinics, so it can carry appointment booking and the reminders your clinic itself sends. Pawza does not, because a clinic integration needs a server to talk to and Pawza does not have one. If your vet uses PetDesk and you want to book through the app, use PetDesk. Plenty of owners run both: the clinic app for talking to the clinic, and a private record that survives switching vets.

The rest of the category splits along similar lines. 11pets is broader and cross-platform with provider collaboration. Medika and PetNoter both run on Android, which we do not. Pawprint, now Great Pet Care, built its reputation on fetching records directly from participating US clinics. VetKeep offers a conversational AI chat over your records, which requires the cloud that we deliberately do not have. Pick the trade you actually want.

TL;DR

• A complete record has twelve categories: vaccinations, parasite prevention, medications, weight history, allergies and reactions, microchip plus registry, surgeries, chronic conditions, labs, insurance, diet, and clinic contacts.
• Different people ask for different slices. Emergency vets want meds, allergies, weight and diagnoses. Kennels and groomers want proof of vaccination, often given a set number of days before arrival. Insurers want invoices plus prior history.
• Core vs non-core is a risk category. WSAVA, AAHA and AAFP set the categories, and your vet and local rabies law set the intervals. The categories also move, as canine leptospirosis did in AAHA’s 2024 update to its canine guidelines.
• International travel is governed by the destination country. You need an official export health certificate from your government’s authority; a summary you made yourself won’t count. Start months ahead.
• The record that counts is the one you can produce in twenty seconds with no signal and no login, as one document, with the original scan still attached.