Episode 31  ·  25m 44s

Introducing PetGuide — A Single Home for Your Pet's Whole Life and Care

Dr. Michael LoSasso, DVM & Julie Schwenzer Frisco Emergency Pet Care
PetGuide app Pet records Pet sitters Chronic conditions Emergency prep
"PetGuide.app is changing the way pet owners understand their pets' health, and Dr. LoSasso is helping shape the future of how families get reliable veterinarian guidance right at their fingertips."
— Julie Schwenzer

Episode summary

This episode is a departure from the usual clinical topic — Dr. LoSasso, a consultant on the project, introduces PetGuide.app, a pet-care organizer he's helped build with the same team behind a couple of earlier tools. His starting premise: caring for a pet generates a lot of fragmented information — take-home instructions, medications, schedules, records — and the problem isn't that owners don't care enough, it's that organizing all of it has become unnecessarily hard. PetGuide gives each pet a single persistent space for that information, plus a running record of life events and photos.

The core feature is shared stewardship. A spouse can be added as a co-steward with full, equal access to everything. A pet sitter or foster caregiver can be added as a temporary steward instead, with checklist-based access — walks, feeding, medications, laid out as items they can actually check off rather than relying on handwritten notes left on the counter. Dr. LoSasso says this gives owners real confidence from afar that care is actually happening while they're away, and reduces some of the anxiety of leaving a pet with someone else.

"That pet story goes with that pet. That information really belongs almost to the pet — even though we see ourselves as owners, it's a way to maintain the continuity of care, to maintain the integrity of the information that started at puppyhood."
— Dr. Michael LoSasso, DVM

Where it gets more clinically useful is condition-specific tools, which a veterinary practice can enable after a diagnosis. He walks through two examples: a dog newly diagnosed with congestive heart failure gets a resting respiratory-rate counter — tap the screen each time the dog breathes over a set interval, and the app charts the trend over time and shares it with the vet. A dog diagnosed with epilepsy gets a seizure timer right on the front page, plus a running log of every event (with comments, date, and duration) and medication history, exportable for a vet or neurologist — sparing an owner from trying to reconstruct months of seizure history from memory during an already stressful appointment.

Built for the moment you're too stressed to remember anything

Dr. LoSasso speaks from direct ER experience here: owners frequently arrive unable to say what medications their pet takes, at what dose, or what a recent bloodwork result showed — sometimes not even having a copy of labs run the day before. He describes a common pattern of a spouse being sent in with the dog, having been handed the task with no context on what's actually going on. Having medications and archived documents like lab results stored in the app means the ER doesn't have to start from zero — and can sometimes skip repeating tests that were already done, saving the owner money. He notes people are already at a heightened emotional state walking into an ER, which measurably reduces memory and cognitive function — so even a good, thorough conversation with a vet often doesn't survive the walk to the parking lot.

He's careful to draw a firm boundary around what the app is not: it doesn't diagnose anything, doesn't give automated medical advice, doesn't sell user data or phone numbers, doesn't touch medical records, and isn't in the business of vaccine reminders. It does include a triage checklist on the front page to help an owner decide whether a situation can be monitored at home, needs a call to the vet, or needs an immediate ER visit — plus an optional well-being tracker for logging how an older pet is doing over time without relying on memory. Longer term, the team has discussed letting owners turn a pet's recorded life events into a printed book. Currently PetGuide is a web app at PetGuide.app; native iPhone and Google Play apps — which would also enable optional push notifications — are planned as more clinics adopt it.

Questions answered in this episode

The following questions are answered by Dr. LoSasso in this episode, drawn directly from the conversation.

Dr. LoSasso describes it as a single, persistent home for a pet's care information and life memories — medications, schedules, records, and photos in one place instead of scattered across take-home instructions, memory, and random notes. He's a consultant on the app's development and worked on earlier related tools with the same team.
Yes. Owners can add a spouse as a co-steward with full access, or add a pet sitter or foster caregiver as a temporary steward with limited, checklist-based access — walks, feeding, medications, laid out as items they can check off. Dr. LoSasso says this replaces handwritten notes and gives owners confidence, from anywhere, that daily care actually happened while they're away.
A clinic can send condition-specific tools after a diagnosis. Dr. LoSasso gives two examples: a dog newly diagnosed with congestive heart failure gets a resting respiratory-rate counter that tracks readings over time and can be shared with the vet, and a dog diagnosed with epilepsy gets a front-page seizure timer plus a running log of seizure events and medication history that can be exported for a vet or neurologist.
Dr. LoSasso says this is one of its most practical uses. Owners arriving at his ER are often too stressed to remember medication names, doses, or recent lab results — he describes people not even having a copy of bloodwork done the day before. Having medications and archived documents like lab results stored in the app means the ER doesn't have to guess, and can sometimes avoid repeating tests that were already run, which also saves money.
No — Dr. LoSasso is explicit that the app never diagnoses anything, doesn't provide automated medical advice, and isn't trying to replace the veterinary relationship. It also doesn't sell user data or phone numbers, doesn't touch medical records, and doesn't involve itself in vaccine reminders. Its front page does include a triage checklist to help owners decide whether a situation can be monitored at home, needs a call to the vet, or needs an immediate ER visit.
As of this recording, it's a web app at PetGuide.app. Dr. LoSasso says native iPhone and Google Play apps are planned as more clinics come on board, which will also make optional push notifications (for things like medication reminders) possible — something that isn't practical in the current web-app stage.
JuliePetGuide.app is changing the way pet owners understand their pets' health, and you're helping shape the future of how families get reliable veterinarian guidance right at their fingertips. Can you give us a quick overview — what exactly is PetGuide app?
Dr. LoSassoSure. Caring for a pet is challenging — there's so much information, from take-home instructions and medications to day-to-day scheduling, and it's all become really fragmented. It's hard to keep in one place. The challenge isn't that people don't care enough, it's that caring has become unnecessarily difficult to organize. We're trying to help solve that while serving the veterinary community and providing a real service to your family veterinarian at the same time.
JULIEIs fragmented information one of the main reasons for this app?
Dr. LoSassoIt is. It came out of a couple of other projects I worked on with the same team, trying to relieve some of the burden of stewardship — caring for something else, whether that's land, a historic building, another person, or a pet. Caring for people is very fragmented, our health system is pretty awful, and we're having some of the same challenges with pets. How do we help people capture not only information but memories about their pets? This app is a way to help people remember a pet's entire life, potentially, while giving them good tools to improve care and keep it all in one place — a home for the life and care of a pet. Each pet has one persistent space. Say you've got both your dogs in the app — you can share their care with a spouse, or share limited access with a pet sitter, who sees a checklist: walk, feeding, medications, all things they can check off, instead of you leaving notes. While you're on vacation, you can check that the morning chores were done, which reduces stress about your pet being cared for when you're not there.
Dr. LoSassoWe've also built in care tools that are assigned by your veterinary hospital, since you choose your pet's medical team. If your clinic uses the app, they can send information and enable specific tools. Say a dog named Rosie, an older Cavalier, gets diagnosed with congestive heart failure — her vet says "scan this QR code and download the app," you put Rosie in, and it says information from your vet is waiting, do you want to accept it? You accept it, and you've got articles written by us, though every practice can customize what I put out. One enabled tool helps you count resting respiratory rate — you tap the screen every time she takes a breath over about 15 seconds, and it records and charts that over time, with a way to share it with your vet. It gets information past the exam room and into your home, and takes the burden of remembering off the caretaker.
Dr. LoSassoIn my emergency clinic right now, I've got three QR codes on a laminated card in a drawer — so if you have a congestive heart failure patient, I can give you access right away. If you have a dog diagnosed with epilepsy, watching a seizure is awful, and even though I'll talk to someone for 20 or 30 minutes and they feel a bit better, most of that conversation doesn't make it to the parking lot. Now it's in the app, and there's a seizure timer right on the front page — you tap start, and when it ends you tap that too and add comments. That event gets recorded, time and date, and the app also tracks seizure medications, so you can pull six months of seizure frequency and medication changes to help your vet or neurologist without having to keep your own spreadsheet.
Dr. LoSassoEven if a pet owner never deals with a vet office through the app, there's a way to record everyday life — photos on camping trips, a cat enjoying a lazy day in the sun — meaningful life events, good or bad. At the end of the day you've assembled a series of chapters in the book that is your pet's life. We're excited about extending care well past the exam room for general practitioners and even ER guys like me. We've worked hard to make sure we don't diagnose anything, don't provide automated medical advice, don't sell data or phone numbers, and have no involvement with medical records. You don't get overloaded with tools you don't need — you get information when something's been diagnosed and your vet thinks you need it. We'd rather you spend more time with your pet than with the app. The information is durable too — even if a pet passes, you still have access to it, and eventually we'd like to let owners turn the chapters of a pet's life into an actual printed book.
JulieYour experience as an ER vet, seeing people come in stressed and unable to remember everything — is that one of the main reasons behind this?
Dr. LoSassoPeople come to me and I ask where the list of medications is, and who keeps it. If it's already in the app, even if it's not used daily, it's still there with doses. Classic ER scenario — someone says their vet did bloodwork yesterday, I ask to see it, and they don't have a copy, don't remember the numbers, just that "this thing was high." If you could take a picture of it and archive it, that helps me deliver better care, and it can save you money because I might not need to repeat that lab work. There's so much to keep track of — I don't understand it, but women will send their husbands in with the dog, and the poor guy has no idea what's going on, what medications she takes, how long she's been sick. Coming into an ER already puts you at a heightened emotional state, which decreases cognitive ability and memory — you can leave a great conversation with me and not remember any of it by the time you're on Preston Road. If we can help keep that information in one place, I think people would find it genuinely useful, and tailoring information for a specific practice is going to make the general practitioner's life much easier too.
JulieDoes the app include notifications for when it's time to administer medicine?
Dr. LoSassoGreat question — that'll be important for some people, total overload for others. Right now we're still in a web app stage at PetGuide.app. As we get more clinics using it, the next step is moving to the native app stores, iPhone and Google Play. Once it's a native app, it'll be much easier to offer notifications for people who want them.
JulieThe checklist feature really resonates with me as a longtime dog parent, since we're careful about who pet-sits for us. Is there another feature that stands out as something pet owners will find surprisingly helpful right away?
Dr. LoSassoI think the shared stewardship model applies in so many situations. Beyond a spouse as co-steward, think of a pet sitting company — if all their clients use the app, each sitter can be added as a temporary steward for specific days, sees exactly which pets and checklists apply, and checking things off increases the owner's confidence and helps the sitter stay organized. Or think about someone fostering six dogs for a rescue, trying to track medical records and medications for all of them — when a dog transfers to a new foster or adoptive owner, you just add the new person as primary steward and hand it off. That pet's story goes with the pet — it's a way to maintain continuity of care and the integrity of information that started at puppyhood, maybe went through three fosters and a parvo hospitalization, all handed cleanly to new adoptive parents.
JulieIs there a glossary in the app if people want to look something up?
Dr. LoSassoNo glossary, because it's not trying to replace your veterinarian or recommend veterinary care. This grew out of an earlier app that helps you decide if you need emergency care — on the front page there's an "I'm having a problem right now" option that runs through a triage checklist: is this something to monitor at home, something to call the vet about, or — did my pet just eat xylitol, I should go straight to the ER. There's also a well-being section your vet might enable, to track how an older pet is doing over time with objective data points instead of relying on memory. We've tried hard to keep it easy to use while putting the information you need at your fingertips — to help you be a good pet parent and spend time with your pet, not your pet's paperwork.

Related episodes

Pet Seizures — What to Do Congestive Heart Failure

Related services

Emergency Vet Frisco TX All Services

Have a question for Dr. LoSasso?

We are open right now — and if your pet needs emergency care, come straight in.

Call (469) 287-6767 Emergency guide