How the photo symptom check works — and what it deliberately won’t do

It's rarely a convenient hour when you notice it. A patch of skin that wasn't red yesterday. Something off about one eye. A stool that makes you reach for your phone — first to photograph it, then to ask the internet, which tells you it's either nothing or catastrophic.

The photo symptom check exists for exactly that moment. Here's how it actually works, and — just as important — what we've deliberately built it not to do.

What happens when you send a photo

Petus doesn't run your photo through one general-purpose model and hope for the best. Depending on what you send, it goes to a dedicated analyser — skin, eyes, dental, stool, body condition, or gait (for that one, a short video works better than a photo). Each one grades what it sees against the same published scales vets use, not against vibes.

The check also isn't looking at the photo in isolation. It knows your pet — age, breed, history, what you've logged before. A slightly cloudy eye means something different in a two-year-old spaniel than in a fourteen-year-old one.

Then you get a verdict in plain English, sorted into one of three lanes:

• Now — this needs a vet today. We say so bluntly and help you find one.
• Soon — book an appointment in the coming days; here's what to tell them.
• Monitor — reasonable to watch at home; here's what would change our mind.

And sometimes, honestly: we can't tell from this photo. When that's the answer, we say it — and tell you what a vet would need to look at in person. An uncertain answer delivered plainly beats a confident guess every time.

What it deliberately won't do

It won't diagnose. A photo can suggest, but it can't palpate, listen, or run bloods. Petus tells you how worried to be and what to do next — it doesn't name a disease and call it settled.

It won't talk you out of a vet visit. If anything about the situation looks like an emergency — trouble breathing, suspected poisoning, collapse — Petus skips the analysis entirely and tells you to go now. The most dangerous thing a tool like this could do is sound reassuring at the wrong moment. We've tested exactly that, extensively, and we keep testing it every time we change anything.

It won't waste what it learned. Every check lands in your pet's health record automatically. Six months later, when the vet asks "how long has this been going on?", you'll have the photo, the date, and what it looked like then. That timeline is often worth more than the verdict.

Try it

If your pet has one of those "is this something?" moments — a rash, a limp, a weird stool, an eye that doesn't look right — send Petus a photo. It's free, it takes about half a minute, and the worst case is a plain-English reason to stop worrying.

Petus is not a substitute for veterinary care. When in doubt, always see a vet — and when we're in doubt, we'll tell you to.