Here is the thing nobody warns you about when you bring a pet home.
None of it is hard.
Feeding a dog is not hard. Flea treatment for dogs and cats is not hard either, and even the ones who take it personally have forgiven you by teatime. Brushing a dog's teeth sounds ridiculous for about a week and then becomes something you do while the kettle boils.
What is hard is remembering. There are nine or ten jobs and they run on nine or ten different clocks.
You were told about each one exactly once. Out loud. In a room. By a vet who was already half way to the next appointment while you stood there holding a lead, a carrier, a card machine and an animal who had just weed on the floor.
Ask an owner when their dog was last wormed and watch what happens. There is a pause, then a guess, and the guess goes up at the end like a question, because they know it is a guess as well as you do.
That is not carelessness. The date was never written down anywhere, and a date you cannot find is the same as a date you never had.
So this page is the list. What needs doing, roughly when, and the bit people usually get wrong about each one, which is the useful part. It is not a replacement for your vet. Where something needs a phone call today rather than a think about it later, it says so.
When do puppy vaccinations need doing?
Six to eight weeks to start, a second dose two to four weeks later, then boosters that are not all annual.
That last part surprises people. Not everything in the annual appointment is actually annual. Some components need doing every year, some every three. The appointment is annual because the practice runs on a year and it is easier to see everybody at once.
After the second dose there is a wait of roughly a fortnight before their feet are allowed on ground where other animals have been, which is the bit new owners count down to obsessively, and fair enough.
Here is the part worth knowing. Most owners treat the reminder text as the schedule, and it is not the schedule. It is one practice, reminding you about one animal, out of their system.
Move house, change vet, or have your practice bought out and rebranded, and that reminder stays with them rather than following your pet. That is where the gaps come from, and nobody notices until somebody else asks for the dates.
The Royal Kennel Club has the puppy course in full if you want the detail. The one number to hold on to is the wait after the second jab, and what you do with those two weeks matters more than the date does, which is why it has a page of its own.
How often do fleas, worms and ticks need treating?
On the product's clock, not the animal's, and the product decides whether that is monthly or three-monthly.
This one runs on the shortest clock and gets forgotten the most. Fleas and worms both need repeating rather than doing once, and any flea treatment for dogs sets its own interval. Some go on the skin and some go in the mouth. Two dogs in the same house can easily be on two different schedules, because one of them is nine kilos and the other is thirty.
The mistake, and it is a common one, is dosing by eye. Almost every wormer is dosed by weight, and a puppy's weight changes considerably faster than the treatment interval does. The dose that was right in March is the wrong dose by June, and the packet in the drawer with the corner torn off is not going to tell you which one you gave.
The other one is stopping over winter, because it feels like flea season is over. Fleas live in the house. The house is heated. They are having a lovely time.
Is dog teeth cleaning worth the effort?
Yes, and almost nobody does it.
One dog in eight is diagnosed with dental disease in a year, 2,797 out of 22,333 dogs in the RVC VetCompass primary care study. That makes it one of the most common things a vet sees and one of the least likely things to be spotted at home.
The reason is quite sad when you sit with it. A dog with a painful mouth carries on eating. They do not stop. They do not make a fuss about it. They get on with it, and you have no idea.
Brushing is the only thing that reliably works, and it works best when it started long before it mattered. Dental chews and water additives help around the edges and there is nothing wrong with them, but they are not the thing.
What people get wrong here is waiting for a sign. Bad breath is not an early sign, it is a late one. Lift the lip and look at the back teeth every couple of weeks. Four seconds, and it is more or less the entire intervention.
Does early handling really make a difference?
More than any single job on this page, and it is the one nobody schedules.
Nearly everything here gets easier if the animal is relaxed about being handled. Feet, ears, mouth, every day, followed by something nice.
Do that in the first few months and you have quietly bought yourself ten years of easier grooming, easier worming and much calmer vet visits. Skip it and every one of those becomes a wrestle for the rest of their life.
How much to feed, and why the bag cannot really tell you
Whatever keeps the ribs findable and the waist visible, which is rarely the number on the bag.
Feeding guidelines are written for an average animal at an average activity level, which is nobody's actual pet. A working collie and a collie who lives in a flat and does two walks a day are the same animal on paper and nothing like each other in the kitchen.
So use the animal rather than the chart. You want to feel the ribs without pressing, and see a waist when you look down from above. That beats any number on a packet, because breeds vary enormously and individuals vary inside the breed.
Changing food matters more than people expect. A gut that has settled on one thing takes a week or more to adjust to another, which is why switching abruptly causes an upset that then gets blamed on the new food. Usually it was not the food. It was the speed.
And the thing that catches nearly everyone is counting only meals. Training treats count. Chews count. The last inch of somebody's toast counts. On a small dog that lot adds up to a real slice of the day.
When should you neuter?
Later than we used to say, particularly for larger dogs, and it is a conversation with your vet rather than a rule off a page.
The thinking has moved over the last ten years. It varies by species, by sex, by breed and by size. For larger dogs in particular there is now a reasonable argument for waiting longer than we used to, and your vet will have a view on where your animal sits in it.
What is not in dispute is that it is worth making it a decision rather than drifting past it. And whatever you decide, write down what your vet advised and when, because the follow-up question, months or years later, is always how old they were at the time.
What should you sort out before an emergency?
Two phone numbers and a kit, on a calm afternoon rather than at the worst possible moment.
Most of pet care runs on a monthly or an annual clock. This part runs on hours. Find out where your nearest out of hours vet is and what they charge just to see you, and put together a basic first aid kit somewhere you can lay your hands on it in the dark.
The signs that mean ring now, rather than see how they are in the morning: collapse, difficulty breathing, repeated retching that brings nothing up especially with a swollen belly, seizures, bleeding you cannot stop, anything you suspect they have eaten that they should not have, and a male cat straining in the tray and producing nothing.
That last one gets missed constantly, because it looks like constipation and it is not.
Seasonal hazards deserve a mention of their own, because they rotate through the year and each one catches a fresh set of owners. Grass seeds in late summer. Conkers and acorns in autumn. Antifreeze in winter. Blue Cross covers grass seeds, and they are the one nobody has heard of until the day it happens to them.
If you are reading this at eleven at night with a worried animal next to you, stop reading and ring the out of hours number. The rest of this page will still be here tomorrow.
What else is on the list?
Coat, behaviour and the microchip, and the microchip is the one people get wrong.
Coat and skin. How often you brush is about coat type rather than length. Anything with an undercoat or feathering will matt, and it matts against the skin where you cannot see it until it has become a problem.
Behaviour. Most of what looks like a training problem is a communication problem. A dog yawning in the waiting room is not tired. A shake-off after something tense is not nothing, it is a reset.
Microchipping. A legal requirement for dogs across England, Scotland and Wales since April 2016, and for cats in England only since June 2024. It is also completely useless if the details on the database are two addresses and an old phone number out of date. Checking takes about two minutes.
Why is any of this hard, if none of it is hard?
Because nearly all of it is a date, and a date you cannot find is a date you never had.
Read back up this page and notice how much of it is one. When the last vaccination was. When the wormer is due and which one it was. When somebody last properly looked at the teeth. What the vet said about neutering and how old they were when they said it. Which food, and when it changed.
There is no single correct pet care schedule, and anybody selling you one is guessing. There is your animal, your vet, your product and your dates. The value was never in knowing the general rule. It is in being able to find your own answer at the moment somebody asks you for it.
None of it is complicated. All of it is the sort of thing you get told once and are then expected to carry for a decade, usually while holding something. That is the thinking behind giving your pet their own page on pookii. Everything that matters about them in one place, rather than spread across a drawer, a text thread and your memory, which was never going to hold it anyway.
What else do people ask?
How often should you worm a dog?
It depends on the product and on the dog's weight, not on their age. Most adult treatments land at monthly or three-monthly. Check the packaging for the one you actually have in the cupboard, and check the weight band again as a puppy grows, because they outgrow it faster than you would think.
Do indoor cats need vaccines?
Usually yes, and flea treatment too, which surprises people. Fleas arrive on clothing and on other pets, and several of the vaccinations cover things that do not need another cat present. Ask your vet what applies to your particular situation.
How do I know if my dog has worms?
Often you cannot, and that is exactly why worming runs to a schedule rather than to symptoms. When there are signs they are usually segments like grains of rice around the back end or in the bedding, a pot belly in a puppy, scooting, or weight loss on a normal appetite. A dog can carry a burden and look completely well, so treat on the interval and do not wait to be shown a reason.
What should be in a dog first aid kit?
Vet wrap, sterile dressings, a tick remover, blunt-ended scissors, a foil blanket, and your vet's out of hours number written on paper rather than living only in your phone.
When to neuter a dog?
Later than the old advice, and the size of the dog is what moves the answer most. Large breeds have a reasonable case for waiting longer. Your vet will have a view on where your animal sits, and the thing to record is what they advised and how old the dog was when they advised it.
