Pets August 2026

5 apps for the first year with a new pet

The first year with an animal is the one you will want back, and the one you are too busy to record. These five cover the routine, the training, the medical file a sitter needs, and the photos nobody takes until it is too late.

The apps for the first year with a new pet are Pup to Date, Pet Journal, Lumsters, Dogo and GreatPetCare. I built Pet Journal; the other 4 are other developers’ apps.

MiaAppLog— an iOS developer who reviews other people’s apps
Published August 2026 · apps and prices last checked 13 October 2026

Four stars is my score for how well an app answers this moment. An app I built gets four and a half — that is a rule, not a comparison. The App Store’s own average is on each card beside it.

1. 

   Pup to Date

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Utilities · App Store 4.7 (881)

   Pup to Date is a puppy schedule built around sticking to one: training, potty times and the routine that makes the first months less chaotic.

   Skip it if you want to log more than a few events — it stops at around five before asking for a membership, and entering an event is where the bug reports concentrate.

   Official site ↗More lists with Pup to Date

   
2. 

   Pet Journal Editor’s pick

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.5 · Free · Lifestyle · App Store 5.0 (8)

   The first year is the one you forget, and Pet Journal is where it gets kept: snap a photo, write the moment behind it, and the ordinary days survive as well.

   App Store ↗More lists with Pet Journal

   
3. 

   Lumsters

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Lifestyle · App Store 4.6 (502)

   Lumsters writes daily care guides for your specific animal, covering training through to weight, so looking after it stops being reactive.

   Skip it if you dislike a trial that wants your card first: cancelling is the loudest complaint, and a lot of the training is still marked coming soon.

   Official site ↗More lists with Lumsters

   
4. 

   Dogo

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Education · App Store 4.8 (17,266)

   Dogo is a library of 100+ tricks with video instructions, plus a built-in clicker to mark the exact moment the puppy got it right.

   Skip it if you were expecting a free tier — reviewers say almost everything needs the subscription, and that the free articles are not the course.

   Official site ↗More lists with Dogo

   
5. 

   GreatPetCare

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Lifestyle · App Store 4.5 (2,163)

   GreatPetCare keeps medical records, feeding instructions and reminders in one place that the sitter and the vet can both see.

   Skip it if your animal arrived without a history — it wants a date of birth you may not have, and the records it offers to pull from a vet often do not arrive.

   Official site ↗More lists with GreatPetCare

   

Pet Journal is one of mine — everything else on this list is someone else’s app. How that works.