How to use the Pets section in My Block Hand

📋 Before you start

Why pets are separate from Animals.

The working dogs and the house cats need different things from a ewe. No NAIT, no paddock, no weaning weights — but they do need worming, flea and tick treatment, vaccinations, and in the case of dogs, an annual registration that carries a fine if you miss it. And if you've got an entire bitch or queen, you need to know when she's due to come into season and when a litter is due.

So Pets is a lighter section with the fields that actually apply. It's on by default, and can be turned off in Settings → What do you track? if you'd rather not see it.

1️⃣ Adding a pet

Name and type is the minimum.

Use + Pet on the Pets card. The fields:

• Name — the only required one.
• Type — Dog, Cat or Other. This controls whether the registration fields appear.
• Sex — Male, Male (desexed), Female, Female (desexed), or leave it unset. Shown on the pet's card alongside type and breed. It also decides whether the heat and breeding sections appear — see section 3.
• Breed and date of birth — the DOB gives you age on the card.
• Microchip number.
• Registration number and registration expiry — dogs only. These appear when Type is Dog and hide otherwise.
• Notes and a photo.

2️⃣ Treatment history

The part that earns its keep.

Each pet keeps its own treatment list. + Add treatment on the pet's record gives you:

• Treatment — Worming, Flea & tick, Vaccination, Vet visit or Other.
• Product used — worth filling in. Which wormer you used last time matters when you're rotating actives.
• Date given and next due.
• Notes.

Set the next-due date and the app takes it from there. Each treatment shows when it was given, when it's next due, and a status badge, so the pet's card tells you at a glance whether anything is overdue.

Save the pet first, then add treatments — they attach to a saved record.

3️⃣ Heats and litters

For the girls who aren't desexed.

Two more sections sit below the treatment history on a pet's record: Heat history and Breeding & litters. They show for females and for pets whose sex you haven't set, and are hidden on anything marked Male or Male (desexed) — so if you don't need them, you'll never see them.

As with treatments, save the pet first and then add records to it.

Heat history

+ Add heat takes a heat date, a cycle length in months (defaults to 6) and notes for signs, behaviour or what the vet said. From your most recent heat and its cycle length, the app shows when the next one is expected.

Breeding & litters

+ Add breeding records a mating:

• Mated date — fill this in and the due date fills itself in at 63 days, which is the usual gestation for both dogs and cats. You can overwrite it.
• Sire / mate — the stud's name, optional.
• Status — Expecting, Whelped / born, or Did not take.
• Litter size and notes for whelping details.

While a record is still Expecting, its due date shows up in your reminders. Set it to Whelped / born or Did not take and it stops reminding you — so the way to clear an old due date is to record what actually happened, not to delete it.

4️⃣ Where it surfaces

Alongside everything else on the block.

Due pet treatments, dog registration expiry, next expected heat and litter due dates all appear in your Reminders, on Today's Brief and on the farm calendar with the rest of the farm's work, and they send a notification like any other reminder. Anything overdue or due within the next 30 days shows up.

That's deliberate — a dog worming due date isn't a different kind of thing from a drench due date, and keeping them in two places is how one of them gets missed.

✅ What the app does vs what you do

The honest split.

My Block Hand handles: a record per pet with type, sex, breed, age, microchip and photo; dog registration number and expiry; a full treatment history with next-due dates and status badges; heat history with the next season predicted from that animal's own cycle; matings with an automatic 63-day due date and litter outcome; and surfacing all of it in your reminders, Today's Brief, calendar and notifications.

You still have to: register the dog with your council; follow your vet's advice on what to give, how often, and on anything to do with mating and whelping; and read the product label — the app records what you tell it, it doesn't know what your dog needs. Predicted heat dates are arithmetic from what you've logged, not a diagnosis.