What’s new: your pet’s diet on the record, and a journal that remembers

"What does she eat?" It is the first question in almost every consult, and most of us answer with a shrug and half a brand name. A vet friend in Singapore put it more bluntly: with chronic gut trouble, diet is often the diagnosis. The food history is the one test she can never order. A dog arrives with months of loose stools and leaves with antibiotics. Two weeks later he is back, worse, and the real culprit was a food switch nobody wrote down.

She has the numbers on her side. The condition owners hear called IBD or IBS in dogs is what vets now group as chronic enteropathy, and in study after study, half to two-thirds of those dogs turn out to be food-responsive: the signs settle within two to four weeks on the right elimination diet. Antibiotics tell the opposite story. Most dogs treated with them relapse, and common choices like metronidazole can leave the gut microbiome measurably disturbed weeks after the course ends. The cheapest, safest diagnostic for a grumbling gut is usually a careful food change, done strictly, with notes.

Petus now does the notes. And the journal learned to give something back.

Your pet's diet is now part of the health record

Tell Petus what's in the bowl and it becomes structured history: brand, product, main protein, daily amounts, even a photo of the label. It copes with the messy truth too: half kibble, half home-cooked, plus whatever the toddler drops. Ask about a food you're considering and Petus will look it up, but nothing is saved until you confirm it against the actual bag. We'd rather ask than guess.

You can also just send a photo of the bowl. Like our photo symptom checks, Petus reads the proportions and estimates the portion as a range instead of a fake exact number.

Water and appetite log in seconds now too. "Barely touched dinner" sounds like a worry; three of those in one week is a pattern your vet wants to know about.

Diet and symptoms, one timeline

Chronic gut problems come down to one question: what changed, and when? Petus now draws the answer. Stool scores on the 7-point Purina scale, appetite, diet switches and antibiotic courses sit on a single timeline on your pet's health page, and in your vet's view if you've shared access. When a problem keeps returning after a food change, Petus names the pattern. It will never tell you to stop a medicine your vet prescribed, only what to raise at the next appointment.

Elimination trials that reach a verdict

Most food trials die of vagueness: no fixed diet, no end date, no verdict. Done properly they are strict. A dermatologist will ask for eight weeks on a single novel protein, though gut signs often answer within two. Petus now runs the whole loop: the trial food, the symptom you're watching, a reminder on review day, and the outcome saved where the next vet can see it.

Meal plans where every number is checked

Ask for a meal plan or a recipe and you get a card you can actually cook from: day-by-day meals, gram portions, a shopping list, a serving stepper for batch cooking. The calorie target comes from the same formula vets use (resting energy requirement, 70 x kg^0.75, adjusted for life stage). Every ingredient is screened against species-specific toxins. Treats are capped at the standard 10% of daily calories. Every number is calculated and checked, so the AI cannot invent one the card shows you.

One deliberate choice: if your pet needs a therapeutic diet, for kidney disease, weight loss or a food-allergy workup, Petus refuses to improvise and points you to your vet instead. A homemade renal diet from the internet is how well-meaning owners hurt their pets.

The journal gives back

Six months of quick notes should feel like something. The journal now shows a map of your documented days, running counts of entries and photos, and quiet milestones as they pass: your 100th entry, a first full year. Medication runs grow a small chain ("14 days") once you're a few days in. No streaks to break, no guilt. Empty days just stay pale.

And once in a while, on the right morning, Petus hands you back a moment from your own archive: the same date last year, the photo from the week you brought her home. It stays rare on purpose. If it came every day you'd stop looking.

Any chat message can now be saved to the journal in one tap, so the good lines don't get lost in the scroll.

Also shipped

• A free breed check: snap a photo, get a breed estimate. No account needed.
• The pet profile grew a vaccination book (dose given, next one due, one-tap reminder) plus microchip, insurance and regular-vet fields. All of it lands in the printable record.
• Cat breed coverage reached parity with dogs, 40 breeds, each verified against published sources. And birds got proper safety rails: dog dose-maths is never applied to a parrot, and the warning signs avian vets actually use, fluffed feathers, tail bobbing, always escalate.
• Care follows geography now. A household in Singapore gets year-round heartworm prevention and tropical tick screening rather than northern-hemisphere season advice.

Everything above is live today. This post is the product, not the roadmap.