Why we built WagWatch

Daisy's story, and the question we couldn't answer.

In 2009 we walked into the St. Paul Humane Society and came home with a black and tan coonhound mix named Daisy. Best guess, she was about 9 months old. She was with us for nearly 17 years.

Daisy was fun loving. Her favorite place in the world was the dog beach, where she'd run and chase and play with any dog or person who'd join in. She was all hound when it came to food, and smart enough to work the system: she knew exactly where to find us at breakfast and dinner, and she'd usually start poking at us an hour or two early, just in case. She was a princess about it. And at the end of the day she was a snuggler, curled up against one of us or the other.

The last stretch was hard. Her mobility went first. Then the accidents started, and the medication changes, and the shifts in behavior that were easy to explain away one at a time. We watched her closely, and we still couldn't say with any confidence whether this week was better or worse than the last one.

Every visit to the vet started the same way. "How has she been?" And the honest answer was a feeling. Not data.

That bothered us. She'd given us her best for 17 years, and when it mattered most, the best we could offer her doctor was a guess.

So we built the thing we needed. A place to log her day in a few seconds: what she ate, whether she got outside in time, which pills she took, how she slept. Nothing fancy. A record we could actually show someone.

A few weeks in, we looked at the log and were surprised by what was there. Trends. Small changes we'd noticed and dismissed one by one, adding up over weeks to something bigger. We'd been living with her every day and hadn't seen it.

We brought that history to her next vet appointment and the conversation changed immediately. We were talking from actual data. Some possibilities got ruled out in minutes. Others got real attention. We caught changes earlier, and she got better care because of it.

She couldn't tell us how she felt. The data could.

We lost Daisy in 2026.

We kept building. Partly because stopping felt like closing the door on her, and partly because everything Daisy taught us applies to every animal that can't say what's wrong. A cat who eats a little less. A rabbit who's quieter than last month. A dog on a new medication. The pattern is there before the problem is. You just need somewhere to see it.

We still use it every day, for Callie, who spent 6 years as Daisy's little sister and is now the one we're keeping an eye on.

That's what WagWatch is for. We'll keep making it better for the people who need it, because we know what it's like to need it. We hope it helps your family the way it helped ours.

Kat & Joe