Samoyed
The Vet Visit Sheet
Most of what you meant to ask a vet arrives on the drive home. This is somewhere to write it down before you go — and somewhere to write down what the vet actually said.
Print this, fill in what you can before the appointment, and take it with you. Ten minutes with a vet goes quickly, and the questions you meant to ask have a way of arriving on the drive home.
The PDF is two A4 pages — one to fill in at home, one to write on in the room. Nothing here is saved and nothing is sent anywhere; this is paper, not a form you submit.
Before the appointment
My dog
Name
Age
Breed (or best guess)
Weight (kg / lb)
Date of this appointment
Reason for the visit
What I have noticed
What you saw, not what you think caused it — "limping on the back left leg, worse after a walk".
| What I noticed | When it started | How often | Getting better, worse, or the same? |
|---|---|---|---|
Food, treats, supplements and medicines
Everything, including flea and worm treatments, supplements and table scraps — some of it interacts.
| What | How much | How often | Since when |
|---|---|---|---|
My questions
Write these before you go. Put the one that worries you most first — appointments run short.
At the appointment
What the vet said, and what happens next
Anything prescribed
| Medicine | How much | How often | For how long |
|---|---|---|---|
Before I leave, check I know
- What to watch for at home, and what would mean calling back
- How and when to give any medicine, and what to do about a missed dose
- Whether food, exercise or grooming needs to change, and for how long
- When the follow-up is, who books it, and the out-of-hours number
- Whether anything here needs claiming on insurance
This sheet is a place to write things down. It is general information, not veterinary advice, and it cannot tell you what is wrong with your dog — only your vet can do that. dogfluffy.com
What a written list of questions actually does
Taking written questions into an appointment is not a folk habit — it has a name in the research literature, the question prompt sheet, and it has been tested properly. The findings are more mixed than the advice you usually see, which is the reason to state them rather than assert that lists help.
In a double-blind randomised trial of 130 patients, Arthur and colleagues compared a question prompt sheet against a general information sheet. The two were rated equally helpful. But people took a more positive view of the prompt sheet, said it prompted them to generate new questions, and preferred it when asked again four weeks later.
The part worth knowing is what the trial did not find. The number of questions people actually asked did not change. Nor did the length of the consultation, nor how anxious they felt. So a sheet like this appears to help you arrive with better questions — not to make you ask more of them, and not to make the appointment longer or more stressful. If someone tells you a checklist transforms a consultation, they are ahead of the evidence.
Two limits, stated plainly because this page leans on one study. It was human medicine — cancer patients seeing palliative care physicians — and we could find no equivalent trial in veterinary practice. And it measured one sheet in one clinic. It is the closest evidence that exists for a consultation aid of this shape, which is not the same as evidence about your vet.
Common questions
Does writing questions down actually change anything?
It is a studied intervention, and the honest answer is "partly". In a double-blind randomised trial of 130 patients, a question prompt sheet was rated no more helpful overall than a general information sheet, but people took a more positive view of it, said it prompted them to think of new questions, and preferred it four weeks later. What the trial did not find was a change in the number of questions actually asked, the length of the appointment, or how anxious people felt.
Is that research about dogs?
No, and it would be wrong to imply otherwise. The trial was in human oncology, with patients seeing palliative care physicians. We could find no equivalent study in veterinary practice. It is offered here as the closest evidence that exists for a consultation aid of this shape, not as proof about vet appointments.
Will taking a list make the appointment run long?
The trial measured consultation length and found no significant difference. If you are worried about time, say at the start that you have written a few things down — it lets the vet pace the appointment around them rather than discovering the list at the door.
What should I write in the questions box?
Whatever you would be annoyed to remember in the car park afterwards. This sheet stays deliberately blank because the useful questions are the ones about your dog, and a printed list of generic ones tends to crowd them out.
Why does the sheet not tell me what my dog's symptoms mean?
Because we are not vets, and a form that interprets symptoms stops being a form and becomes advice from people unqualified to give it. The sheet records what you have observed so the person who is qualified can interpret it.
Do I need to print it?
No — it is a normal web page and fills in on a phone just as well. It is laid out to print cleanly on paper if you would rather write by hand, and the explanatory sections on screen are left out of the printed version so you get the form and nothing else.
