The ‘zero-to-now’ problem with pet care moments
When vet appointments and handover moments start from zero.
You know your pet better than anyone. You notice when they are slightly off before anything is obviously wrong. You know which food they will eat and which they will inspect with suspicion. You know the difference between the sassy bark that means “I also have an opinion on this” and the quieter one that means ‘I don’t like how this feels’.
Now think about how much of all that is in your head, your vet gets to hear, see and know. Your vet, through no fault of their own, knows almost none of this. And that gap, between what you know, observe, feel in your gut, and what your vet can access as data, is affecting the quality of care your pet receives every single time you walk through that door.
At flüf, we call this the zero-to-now problem. Every new person in your pet’s life starts from scratch on a story that has been running for years.
As a human mum of 2 cockapoos and a long history of vet visits, health scares and sometimes weirdly suspiciously observing one or the other, I see this as a system failure in the way pet care is organised or rather not organised, for the way we live and take care of our pets today. A problem big enough to deserve a name - so we have it one.
The zero-to-now appointment
Our handsome boy Bentley has been struggling with ear infections since he was a puppy. He is now 7 years old; only at the start of this year, we managed to link his sensitivity to something specific - poultry. We believe it is poultry that keeps causing inflammation. Imagine our typical vet visit over these 6 years - we had to reconstruct his story from scratch, every time we took him for an ear infection. I had to keep it all somewhere, to repeat it again, so that the vet can piece it all together and suggest treatment.
Now, picture a typical vet visit prep. You have been noticing something for a few weeks. A subtle change in energy, maybe. A shift in appetite. Something you cannot quite name but know is different. You book the appointment, you get there, and the vet asks: “So what brings you in today?”
You try to explain. You try to follow the timeline that felt clear in your head, but it comes out a bit messy and noisy when spoken out loud. The vet examines your pet, who is by now likely operating at high stress levels even with the most empathetic vets, and in that moment, the vet has to make the best possible assessment from that short conversation window.
Vets are very good at what they do. They make calls all the time with incomplete information. But they are working from a snapshot when what they need is a story. Even if it is your regular vet, the story is still put together based on data points in time, not over time. So, they do not know that this has happened twice before, both times in autumn. They do not know that you went for a second opinion with another vet, and you tried a different approach. They do not know about the dietary change six months ago that seemed to help, or the one three months ago that seemed to make things worse. They do not know because that information lives in your memory, your email inbox, your previous practice’s system, and a WhatsApp thread you would have to scroll back through two years to find.
So both you and your vet have to start from zero to get to now. You both have to work hard to create that story in a meaningful way.
This is true whether you have a dog, a cat, or any animal whose story you have been quietly keeping in your head.
This is not just a vet story
The vet is the most common and critical version of the zero-to-now problem. The stakes are so high that an incomplete picture can mean a missed pattern, a delayed diagnosis, a treatment that doesn’t fit this specific animal because the context that would have shaped it never made it into the conversation.
The same problem repeats every time a new carer enters your personal pet care system. The new sitter, a new boarder, even the family member stepping in to help - they all need to know the story, the signs, the quirks. Each of these people is entering into your pet’s life, that’s already created a story. Your pet has a history, a character, a set of patterns that you have built up over years of daily observation. But there is no way to hand that story over without writing, in my case, 10 pages hand over document.
Your pet’s story exists. It just has no way to travel with it
Why the zero-to-now problem matters more than you think
Chronic conditions such as allergies, digestive issues, joint problems, and behavioural changes are notoriously difficult to diagnose from a single appointment. They reveal themselves through patterns over time. An owner who can show a vet twelve months of behaviour logs, dietary notes, and symptom observations is giving that vet something genuinely powerful.
Research into diagnostic errors in veterinary practice has identified incomplete patient history as a contributing factor in a meaningful proportion of cases. Vets themselves will tell you directly: the single most valuable thing an owner can bring to an appointment is context. A clear, honest account of what has changed, when, and what has been tried. The problem is that most owners cannot provide that context reliably. I know this first-hand, and I also remember the feeling of not being able to help because I can’t play back the full story. The result is that vets make decisions with partial information.
What we believe changes when the whole picture is available
flüf is still at pre-launch (as of writing this article). We have spoken to a small number of owners and vets, enough to form a hypothesis, not enough to call it research. What we heard was consistent and deeply relatable. It echoed how we felt in our own individual experiences. Owners who had started keeping more detailed records, even informally and inconsistently, described vet appointments becoming more productive. Handovers to sitters and carers feel like continuing a conversation.
The difference is information that is organised, connected, and ready at the moment someone needs it. That is when we believe everything changes.
Without it, we are stuck in zero-to-now conversations. With it, the vet sees the pattern, the sitter knows the routine, and the carer understands your pet before they have even met.
This is what we believe flüf will make possible for every owner, consistently and over a lifetime.
The zero-to-now problem is solvable. With flüf, we are building a lifetime pet record that closes the gap. Not a tracker, not a reminder app, not a document folder. A connected, longitudinal record of your pet’s life, built over time, owned by you, and ready to travel with them wherever they go.
If it resonates, if you have lived this problem with a vet, a sitter, a carer, we want to hear from you. The flüf Insiders panel is where we are taking this hypothesis apart and rebuilding it with real owners. What you tell us will directly shape what flüf becomes.
Join the waitlist and opt in to flüf Insiders
Izzy Raffi is the co-founder of flüf and the owner of Bentley and Cooper, two cockapoos with very different health histories, habits and patterns.
