Pet Care App with Vet and Sitter Booking

Project overview

We built a pet care platform for a startup connecting pet owners with veterinary clinics and independent sitters and walkers. Owners create a profile for each pet, store vaccinations and medical notes, book appointments and arrange care when they travel.

The project covered the owner app, a partner app for sitters, a clinic portal and the Node.js platform behind them, including payments and verification. It builds on our on-demand app development work for booking marketplaces.

The client and the challenge

Owners kept vaccination cards on paper, forgot booster dates and found sitters through social media with little way to check them. Clinics took bookings by phone and re-typed pet details at every visit. When a pet was left with a sitter, important details such as feeding routines, medication times and the vet's contact were passed on in hurried messages.

The client needed three connected experiences — owners, sitters and clinics — with trustworthy sitter onboarding, secure payments held until a booking was completed, and a clear line on who could see a pet's medical history.

Solution architecture & delivery

We used React Native for both the owner and partner apps, sharing components such as chat, calendars and pet profiles. The Node.js API is organised into pets and records, clinic scheduling, care bookings, messaging and payments modules backed by a relational database.

Each pet profile holds species, breed, weight, allergies, medications and vaccinations. Clinics on the platform add vaccination entries directly after a visit; owners can also scan a paper card as an attached document. The system calculates due dates from the vaccine type and sends reminders ahead of time. Owners grant a clinic or sitter access to the medical record per booking, and that access ends when the booking closes. A care sheet on each profile lists feeding routines, walks and medication times, and is shared automatically with the sitter for the length of a booking.

Clinic scheduling reads each vet's working hours and appointment types from the portal, holding a slot while the owner confirms. For sitting and walking, owners search by date and area, see verified sitters with reviews and request a booking. Sitters are onboarded with identity checks and reference review by the client's team before their profile goes live. Cancellation rules are set per sitter within limits defined by the client, and double bookings are prevented by locking a sitter's calendar slot during checkout.

Payments are authorised when a sitter accepts and captured after the visit, with the platform fee split out automatically. During walks the partner app shares live location and a route summary, and sitters post photo updates to the booking chat so owners can see how their pet is doing.

Key features we built

• Multi-pet profiles with medical notes, medications and allergies
• Digital vaccination records with due-date reminders
• Vet appointment booking against real clinic schedules
• Search and booking of verified sitters and dog walkers
• Payments held until care is completed, with automatic fee splits
• Live walk tracking, photo updates and in-app chat
• Per-booking permission to share a pet's health record
• Clinic portal for schedules, records and appointment management

How we delivered it

1. Discovery. Interviews with pet owners, clinic receptionists and sitters to map booking, record-keeping and trust concerns for each side.
2. UX and prototype. Prototypes of the owner, partner and clinic flows tested separately, then together in end-to-end booking scenarios. Sitter onboarding was tested with real applicants to keep document upload simple on a phone.
3. Build. Two-week sprints delivering the shared API first, then owner and partner apps and the clinic portal in parallel.
4. Pilot. Launch in a limited service area with a group of clinics and sitters, refining verification, cancellations and reminder timing.
5. Growth and support. Expansion to new areas, feature releases based on marketplace data and ongoing maintenance, using our launch checklist for each release.

Technology choices

• React Native — a shared codebase for the owner and partner apps on iOS and Android, reusing chat, calendar and profile components.
• Node.js — an event-driven API for bookings, reminders, real-time chat and location updates across three user types.

Outcomes

• Owners keep every pet's vaccinations and medical notes in one place with automatic booster reminders
• Clinics receive bookings with pet details attached instead of re-entering them by phone
• Sitters are verified before they can take bookings, giving owners more confidence
• Payment is released only after care is completed, reducing disputes between owners and sitters
• Owners control who can see a pet's health record and for how long
• Sitters receive feeding, medication and emergency details in a structured care sheet for every booking

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