Quality of Life Tracker

This is a tool for noticing trends, not a machine that produces a verdict. Nobody should decide anything from one week's score. What a record is genuinely good at is catching the slow slide that daily proximity hides — the one where you look back at four weeks of numbers and see clearly what you could not see on any single Tuesday.

The reason it helps is that any single day is a bad instrument. You are tired, you are watching for signs, and the dog's own variation is wide. Well-meaning people will tell you that you will just know. Sometimes that is true, and mercifully fast. Far more often the decline is gradual and jagged, with good days sitting inside it: the dog who could not manage the stairs on Sunday trots up them on Wednesday, appetite comes and goes, and every upturn resets the clock in your head. That ambiguity is not a failure of perception. It is the actual shape of the disease.

Each domain is scored from 0 to 10, for a total out of 70. Higher is better. The structure deliberately mirrors the quality of life scale veterinarians already use, so the shape of the assessment and the number at the bottom of it are recognizable when you hand them across the consulting room table. The domains describe your dog's experience rather than his diagnosis.

• Appetite — is he eating willingly, without coaxing, hand-feeding, or a rotation of increasingly tempting foods? 0 is refusing all food including things he loves, 5 is eating most meals but needing toppers or encouragement, 10 is eating normally and enthusiastically.
• Hydration — is he drinking normally, with moist gums and skin that snaps back when you lift it? 0 is not drinking at all with dry, tacky gums, 5 is drinking less than usual, 10 is drinking as he always has. This domain matters more than owners expect in dogs on diuretics.
• Breathing and rest — is he breathing easily at rest, with no visible effort and no positioning to get air, and can he settle and sleep? 0 is struggling for air and unable to lie down at all, 3 is fast or labored breathing much of the time with propped-up sleeping or night pacing, 8 is occasional mild effort with mostly settled nights, 10 is breathing easy at baseline and sleeping flat. In a cardiac dog this domain carries the most weight, and night restlessness belongs inside it — a dog who cannot settle at 3 a.m. is usually telling you something about his breathing, not about his sleep habits.
• Mobility — can he get up unaided and go as far as he wants to go? 0 is cannot or will not stand, 3 is getting up only with help and lying back down after a few steps, 10 is getting up unaided and walking as far as he likes.
• Continence — is he clean and dry, with no accidents he is aware of and bothered by? 0 is constant accidents and soiling where he lies, 5 is occasional accidents mostly overnight, 10 is fully continent and asking to go out the way he always has. The clause about being bothered matters: a dog who does not notice is in a different situation from one who is distressed by it.
• Engagement and joy — does he still greet you, still seek out the things he loves, the door, the couch, you? 0 is checked out with no response to anything he loved, 5 is interested in some things but sleeping through most of the day, 10 is fully himself.
• More good days than bad — across the last seven days, which outnumbered which? 0 is no good days at all, 3 is one or two, 5 is about half and half, 8 is five or six, 10 is all seven. This is the domain that catches what the others miss, because it asks you to average a week rather than rate an evening.

Why the scale has written landmarks

A bare 0 to 10 slider drifts. Your 6 in March is not your 6 in June, because the reference point moves with you as the dog changes. Each domain in the tracker therefore anchors 0, 3, 5, 8 and 10 with a written description, so you are matching a sentence rather than guessing a number. You can still pick the values in between when nothing quite fits, but the landmarks are what keep four weeks of scores comparable to each other.

Write one sentence with each score

“Wouldn't do the stairs on Saturday.” “Ate breakfast standing up for the first time.” The note field exists because those sentences will tell you more in retrospect than the numbers do. They are also what makes the export useful to a vet, who can read a month of them faster than they can interview you about it.

• Scoring on the worst evening of the week. Pick a fixed day and keep it, or the record measures your mood as much as the dog's.
• Swapping who does the scoring. Two people rate the same dog differently. One scorer, or a consistent conversation between two, keeps the trend readable.
• Treating the total as a verdict. The number is a conversation starter with your veterinarian, not a decision engine.
• Letting one good day reset the record. The good-day trap is the specific way this goes wrong most often.
• Waiting for certainty before asking for help. Owners who have been through it almost universally report that they waited slightly too long rather than acted too soon. Talking to your vet earlier costs nothing and closes no doors.
• Using this instead of medical monitoring. A rising resting breathing rate is a treatable-fluid question, not a quality of life question. Sustained above 35 to 40 in a diagnosed dog means call your vet; above 60 is an emergency.

The export produces a dated list of scores, domain breakdowns and your notes. Owners consistently report that the record told them something they already half-knew but could not hold steadily, and that handing it over changed the appointment from a discussion of impressions into a discussion of evidence. If you prefer paper, the printable Heart Dog Tracker Pack contains a weekly quality of life sheet alongside the breathing log and symptom checklist.