If you are planning to adopt a pet, you will want to maintain a system for organizing all your pet records. Experienced pet people have learned this fact, but novices might be surprised to find out that with pets, comes a paper trail of necessary documents. As a pet owner you will want to keep easy access to these documents and not rely on vendors to provide them. Unless, of course, you are okay missing your flight because the vet is closed, and your dog is not allowed in the Pet Hotel without vaccination records.
Pet papers come from a lot of places. Here are just a few ways to fill that filing cabinet:
- Visit the Vet - Every trip to your pet’s least favorite place adds to a growing collection of medical files some of which are needed on a regular basis.
- Emotions - Registering a pet as an emotional support animal requires plenty of paperwork.
- Competition - If you want to display your perfect pet in any kind of competition, you will need papers for certification and entry.
- See a lawyer - Ensuring your pet’s care with a will or a trust will generate a few pages.
- Caregivers - Creating and maintaining detailed instructions for our pets’ emergency caregivers is vital and takes a few pieces of paper.
No matter how many papers your pets need the real difficulty is in how often these documents need to be retrieved, updated, checked, displayed, and shared.
There are a surprising number of situations that require pet parents to dig through their files:
- Going to the veterinarian, even just for routine checkups, might require finding some old information. While switching veterinarians might require finding all of your old information.
- Traveling with a pet means handing over papers, mostly medical forms, and signing some new ones.
- Businesses, schools, storefronts, are all cracking down on false service animals, so you need to have your certifications handy.
- If your pet is lost, you may need your proof of ownership to regain custody once found. Don’t forget to keep you pets’ tracking chips updated too. You will also want to ensure your pet’s chip has been updated properly so that you can be located if the pet is scanned.
- If there are any kind of legal disputes, then pet trusts and wills need to be readily accessible.
- Registering your pet anywhere for anything will require certain documents. Medical history and proof of ownership for example.
- If something happens to you, your pets’ designated emergency caregiver will need easy access to all of this information.
Pet papers constantly need to be maintained and displayed. So, it really does save time and effort to have all pet related documents conveniently stored and organized. You could keep a physical filing system, but that means reprinting documents when they need updating. Storing information on a computer is a great solution, but you’ll have to plan ahead and email or print documents before you need them.
Pet Notify also provides an option. Our in-app Pet Vault provides a useful tool for storing and viewing all things pet pertinent, including documents. Upload documents for each pet on your computer or smartphone and access them from both devices. With Pet Notify, your entire pet library will always be in your hand.
