DogNote - Pet Journal & Walks

So I downloaded this app and you get most of the functionality free, which is great. You don’t have access to a calendar or reports unless you subscribe. I subscribed for one month and so far I’m not impressed. I set scheduled reminders to start in April- when we get a new puppy. However, I’m already getting those reminders today. You can’t set a reminder for multiple pets. I have to set a reminder for each dog individually and each cat individually or just pick one of them and pretend it’s all of them. I can’t just say “feed dogs” or “feed pet A, B and C”. Also the reminders are just that, reminders. They aren’t tasks. There’s no checkbox for you to click once it’s done. You have to go and manually create an event saying “I fed dogs A, B and C” as an event. It’s nice that it’s a shared app across multiple users. So if my husband goes in and creates an event saying he fed the dogs then I know not to feed them. But I also know he’s not going to want to do more than a check box. So it is limiting. Will update if anything changes.

This app has been a lifesaver as a first time dog and puppy owner. It allows me to keep track of his sleep and helps me make sure he doesn’t get overtired. And being able to track his bathroom habits have helped me be more proactive about preventing accidents. Oh and being able to take photos and attach it to an entry was helpful the first time he got sick. I was able to keep an accurate log in case I needed to show my vet. My only knock on the app, is that I wish it had spellcheck and auto correct. I’m way more reliant on that than I realized. And one feature I’d like to see in the future would be the ability to graph his weight and food intake.

Works well for both me and my boyfriend for our one pet. The interface looks modern, it’s easy to add events, and you can sync with another person without having to pay to unlock premium features- something most other apps require. A few suggestions we’d make are: ability to choose light or dark mode instead of it automatically changing, seeing how long it has been since the event was logged (i.e. 3 min. ago, 2 hrs ago, etc.) on the activity page underneath the time it was charted, the ability to add a note to the activity page without it being attached to an event, and having the analytics page provide more useful information. It’s not helpful to me to see what percent of activity is logged by who, but it would be helpful to see how many times each event was logged and for how long.