The dog, the cat, the rabbit — pets in your family overview

The dog runs off. You're standing in the park, calling around, and the first thing somebody asks is: "What's the chip number?" And you stand there blank. It's filed somewhere, probably in a folder at home — or in an email from 2019.

Today we're shipping pets in FamilyBoard. Add your family's dog, cat, rabbit, bird — whichever pets you have — with chip number, breed, birth year, allergies and vet contact. Visible to everyone in the family, and to a linked bonus family.

What it is

In Settings → Family → Pets you can add one or more animals. Per pet, you can fill in:

• Name
• Species (dog, cat, rabbit, bird, fish, reptile, other)
• Breed
• Birth year
• Chip number (for animals that have one)
• Allergies
• Vet — name and phone
• Other notes (chronic medication, behavior quirks, insurance company)

None of it is required. If you have a goldfish, "Bobby — fish" is enough. If you have a dog that's insured and chipped and allergic to chicken, you can fill in everything.

When you need it

There are three situations where pet info is valuable, and all three come up unexpectedly:

The emergency. The dog runs off, the cat climbs up a tree and gets stuck, the rabbit escapes from its hutch. You need the chip number or the vet's phone — and you need it now.

The boarding kennel or dog daycare. You drop off the dog over the holidays. They want vaccination dates, allergies, insurance company, vet. Having that on your phone instead of in a folder saves twenty minutes.

Care by someone else. Grandma is watching a weekend. The bonus family takes the cat for a week. The neighbor feeds the fish. They all need to know something — and it's tiring to type the same SMS every time.

Visibility

Pets are family-scope. Everyone in the family sees every pet. If you're linked to a bonus family, they see all the pets too — which is right, because usually it's the same animal moving between homes, and the same adults who need the vet number if something happens.

Outside the family and bonus family, nothing is visible. Pet info doesn't get included in any sharing, no export, nothing that leaves your calendar circle.

This is "read-mostly"

We want to be honest about something: pet info isn't a feature you'll click into every week. You fill it in once, maybe update it once a year. It isn't a feature that delivers dopamine.

But when you need it, you need it badly — and then it's worth having everything in one place instead of hunting through four apps and a physical folder. We built it for that. Not for engagement, but for the moment when the dog is on the wrong side of the hill and you need the chip number.

Technical

New table pets (migration 0054), family-scope RLS. Species is a CHECK constraint on the seven categories above — we don't want people writing "dog" four different ways. Everything else is free text, including breed (because mixed breeds and rare breeds can't be enumerated) and chip number (because international formats vary).

No photos in the first version. That's deliberate — we want this surface small and fast, not a mini-Instagram. Possibly photos later if many people ask.

What we didn't do

We had a long list of possible fields: vaccination dates, insurance numbers, photos, weight curves, training notes. We removed all but the ones that come up in emergency situations. Pet info shouldn't become a health journal — it should be a sticky note that's always at hand.

If we notice many people asking for something specific (vaccinations will probably come up), we'll add it. But the starting point is: as little as possible, as useful as possible.

Try it

Pets is on familyboard.io today (Settings → Family → Pets). iOS gets it later this year.

This isn't our most spectacular feature this year. But it's one of the ones I personally got most excited about when we built it — because it's the classic FamilyBoard kind: small, low-key, but firmly useful when life isn't going to plan.