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- 🐾 Beyond the Consult Room — How Dog Owners Navigate Confusion, Care & Daily Decisions
🐾 Beyond the Consult Room — How Dog Owners Navigate Confusion, Care & Daily Decisions
Woofya Pet Care Insights 2025 – Part 3: The Issues Dog Owners Face
Rachel @woofya.com
November 24, 2025
Through our conversations with dog owners, six clear patterns emerged.
1. Aftercare Confusion (Post-Consult or Vet Advice)
Many dog owners leave veterinary consultations uncertain about how to manage care at home — especially after surgery, during complex behavioural issues, or when supporting pets with chronic conditions. Feeding routines, medication schedules, and progress monitoring are often forgotten or inconsistently followed. Most owners rely on memory, handwritten notes, or online searches to fill these gaps, leading to anxiety, fragmented care, and slower recovery outcomes
Lisa – Alba
“At the beginning, of course, we had no idea what to feed her, when to feed her. At times we were underfeeding her, and other times we were overfeeding her by accident. We kind of had to work it out ourselves.”
Amy – Elsie
“She has a bit of a skin allergy, so we're just trying to get some ideas from other people on what they've done. I hopped onto a lot of the forums and things like that as well. You kind of reach out and say has anyone got any suggestions?”
2. Information Overload & Misinformation
Many owners feel overwhelmed by the abundance of online advice. They cross-check information from Google, Reddit, Facebook groups, and friends — yet often end up more confused. The challenge lies not in finding information, but in trusting which advice applies to their dog’s breed, specific chronic condition, and lifestyle.
Lisa – Alba
“I was probably Googling quite a lot, getting a hundred answers and then working out which one I thought was common sense. You get so much information and you just try to work out what sounds right.”
Amy – Elsie
“It is so important… it’s about filtering through what’s actually true. People tell you a lot of things out there, but I need time to go through them and that’s not for my dog, for this breed, for this age.”
Grace & Chris – Henry
“There’s certain foods all dogs can’t eat that you know, but then there’s probably stuff that’s not great for dogs with potential issues. Some breeds naturally get more breathing problems. We look it up all the time because we don’t want to give him things that aren’t safe.”
Yeonjee – Bella
“There’s a lot of ads… and I think that’s why it’s hard to know what’s actually right. You see so many different things and you don’t know which one to trust.”
3. Vet Access & Continuity Gaps
Many owners juggle multiple clinics — a trusted specialist, a convenient local vet, or emergency visits — resulting in scattered records and inconsistent advice. While most veterinarians provide follow-up care, ongoing coordination across different providers is often limited. This lack of shared visibility can undermine owner confidence, fragment care routines, and affect long-term health outcomes.
Sid – Benji
“What motivates me to go back is that they have the whole history. If I take him to a different vet, the history is distributed.”
Lisa – Alba
“We have a local vet for quick emergency… and then we have one further away we really trust… so we wouldn’t go to the local vet for an emergency, we would go over to the greyhound specialist vet.”
4. Routine & Habit Struggles
Busy lifestyles and competing priorities make it difficult for pet owners to maintain consistent feeding, exercise, and training routines. While most owners genuinely strive to stay on track, daily care is often disrupted by time pressures, changing schedules, or lapses in motivation. Many rely on manual calendars, memory, or ad-hoc reminders to stay organised — methods that are rarely reliable or sustainable.
Jay – Pluto
“I’m very strict with his diet. And what time he needs to eat — I feel it twice because that time he was building morning and evening, but now it was probably built old only in daytime and snacks like carrots. That’s it.”
Che – Riley
“She’s the only dog I’ve ever met that hides when you say walkies… she tries to hide behind the lounge.”
5. Admin & Tracking Burden
Many owners still manage their dogs’ health information manually — tracking medications, home care instructions and routines through notes, diaries, or spreadsheets. These manual systems are time-consuming, error-prone, and often lead to unnecessary stress and inefficiency in daily care.
Grace & Chris – Henry
“I’ve got friends making everything logging everything down in an Excel to figure out every time what is the best schedule to feed or water before bedtime so the puppy can have longer kind of a time.”
Bianca & Diego – Jessie
“Sometimes they remind us if we need to do something… she’s currently on injections for arthritis. My parents just go once a month; they keep track of it.”
Lisa – Alba
“Vaccine… yeah, it’s probably something that you have to keep on top of; you have to put things in your diary, you have to hopefully the vet tells you when it’s vaccine time.”
6. Emotional & Mental Load
Behind every practical task lies emotional labour — the constant worry about “getting it right.” Owners express guilt over missed walks, anxiety about making health mistakes, and stress about the time and cost of care. Their reflections reveal genuine dedication to their pets, but also the ongoing mental burden that comes with the responsibility of daily care.
Jordan – Buster
“I think like guilt is kind of like when you're traveling or like, you know, we’re enjoying like the world and it's like wish that's true.”
Yeonjee – Bella
“You kind of have a lot of sacrifices, but it being a dog or things.”
Chris & Savannah – Laura
“Sometimes you feel guilt like you're not doing the right thing by them… you're not going to take for walks when it's rainy or you're at work eight hours a day.”
Michelle – Riley
“Not being able to go away… it's hard to find someone I trust enough to look after her.”
These challenges reveal how much pressure dog owners carry behind the scenes — often silently. Their intentions are strong, but daily life, limited support, and fragmented communication make adherence difficult.
👉 In Part 4, we explore what dog owners want — the tools, experiences, and communication they value most from their vets.
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