Plan for Paw grew out of that. Every template on this site started as something I made for myself — a feeding chart stuck to a fridge, a page of notes left for a sitter, a folder of vaccination records I could never find when the vet asked for it. They were made to solve a real problem in my own house first, and only later cleaned up into something worth handing to someone else.
Where this comes from
I grew up in a house that always had animals in it. There was rarely a moment without a dog somewhere underfoot, and usually a cat who had decided which chair was hers. That is not a qualification — plenty of people have the same story. But it does mean that the ordinary rhythms of pet care are second nature to me: what a normal week looks like, what changes when an animal gets older, and how quickly a household routine falls apart when nobody wrote anything down.
What I have mostly learned is unglamorous. Animals do better with predictable routines. Most emergencies are less frightening when the vet's number and the medication list are already on one page. And the person most likely to forget whether the dog has been fed is not the sitter — it is you, on a busy Tuesday.
What I actually know well
I would rather be specific about this than let a byline imply more than it should.
- Dogs — this is where I am strongest. Daily routines, feeding and exercise patterns, house-training a puppy, settling a dog into a new home, building the kind of structure that makes an anxious dog calmer. Most of what I write about dogs comes from having done it repeatedly rather than from reading about it.
- Cats — confident, with a different emphasis. Indoor enrichment, litter habits as an early warning sign, feeding routines in multi-cat homes, and the reality that a cat's "off" day is easy to miss without a record.
- Rabbits and small pets — solid but narrower. Housing, handling, diet basics and the care details that owners of more common pets tend to underestimate.
- Birds, reptiles and fish — I write these carefully. My personal experience is thinner here, so the encyclopedia entries stick to well-established, widely agreed husbandry information and stay away from anything contested.
- Record keeping and household organisation. Honestly the thing I am best at, and the reason this site exists at all.
What I am not
This matters more than the list above, so it gets its own section.
- I am not a veterinarian. Nothing on this site diagnoses, prescribes or recommends treatment. The health templates are places to record information a vet has already given you — vaccination dates, medication names, symptoms you have observed. They are organisational tools, not medical ones.
- I am not a professional trainer or behaviourist. The training trackers help you keep a consistent record of what you are working on. They are not a training method, and a dog with a serious behavioural problem needs a qualified professional, not a printable.
- I am not a nutritionist. Feeding schedules organise the routine you and your vet have decided on. Portion sizes and diet changes are conversations to have with your vet.
If you are reading something here while worried about an animal in front of you right now, please stop reading and call a vet. That is not a disclaimer for legal reasons — it is genuinely the right thing to do.
How the guides get written
- Every guide starts from a question owners actually ask, usually one I have had to answer for myself or for someone who called me about their new puppy.
- Anything factual and checkable — lifespans, breed origins, typical sizes, common health predispositions — is checked against established reference sources rather than written from memory.
- Anything medical is written descriptively and points to a vet. If a topic cannot be covered responsibly without veterinary training, it does not get covered.
- Where I am giving an opinion from experience, I say so, so you can weigh it as such.
- Guides get revised when I learn something better. The encyclopedia entries and articles carry a last-updated date for that reason.
Why the initials
I write as E. S. rather than under a full name. Plan for Paw is a small, personal project and I prefer to keep a degree of privacy — but I would rather tell you who is behind the writing, and what they do and do not know, than publish under a faceless brand name and let you guess.
If you want to reach me, the address below goes to me directly.
Get in touch
Corrections, disagreements and "you have got this wrong" emails are all welcome — especially the last kind. Write to planforpaw@proton.me.