A Glarda card is a lifetime veterinary record for one animal, held for the owner rather than by a clinic. It collects what has been done, what was prescribed and what the animal reacted badly to, and any veterinarian the owner shows it to can read it. It is being built and is not available yet.
Why this is not how it works today
Your animal’s history lives inside whatever software each practice you have used happens to run. Change vet, move city, or see an out-of-hours service, and the new clinician starts from what you can remember. That is fine for a nail trim. It is not fine when the question is what anesthetic the animal had last time, or which drug caused the reaction.
A pet also outlives arrangements. Animals are rehomed, families separate, shelters take in an animal with no paperwork, and people move abroad. Each of those events usually means the history stops and a new one starts from zero. The card is designed around the animal as the thing that lasts, not the account, the clinic or the owner’s phone.
What the card would hold
- Vaccinations, with the product given and when the next one is due.
- Treatments, procedures and surgeries, with dates and the practice that did them.
- Medicines, past and current, and anything the animal reacted badly to.
- Laboratory results as the practice reported them, with the date and the lab.
- Weights over time, which is often the single most useful column on it.
- Identity: microchip number, species, breed, sex, date of birth, and a photograph.
- Notes you add yourself, which are marked as yours and never presented as clinical record.
Two kinds of entry, never mixed
The hardest part of the design is one sentence with two halves. An owner must be able to write in the card, and an owner must never be able to write a clinical record. If your note that you gave half a tablet at home sat in the same list as a prescription written by a veterinarian, a vet in another country could not tell which was which, and a record that looks authoritative and is not is worse than no record at all. So the card would keep two classes of entry apart, always, and would render them so that they never look alike.
| Clinician-attested | Owner-reported | |
|---|---|---|
| Written by | A verified practice | You, at any time |
| Examples | Diagnosis, procedure, prescription, lab result, vaccination given | A symptom you noticed, a dose given at home, a weight, diet, behavior, a photo of a wound |
| Can it be changed? | No. A correction is a new entry that points at the original, and the original stays | Yes, by you, with the history kept |
| Carries | Practice name, clinician name, date and time, jurisdiction | Your name, date and time |
| Shown as | The record | Your log, on a visibly different surface |
It is yours, and that is the point
The card is portable by design. You would be able to print it, export it whole, and show it to any vet without asking us or anyone else for permission. A record that cannot be taken to another practice is never seen by another practice, and a record nobody else can read is not much of a record.
That also means it is not a lock-in: if Glarda stops being useful to you, the history leaves with you in a form somebody else can read.
The printed version matters more than it sounds. The situations that make a lifetime record valuable are often the ones with no signal: a rural locum, a border crossing, a clinic whose internet is down. The plan is a one-page life card that carries identity, chip number, allergies and reactions, current medicines and the last few visits, designed as an object you keep in a drawer and hand to a stranger, not as a printout of a web page.
What it is not
The card is not your clinic’s legal medical record and it would never claim to be. In most US states, and under the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in the UK, the record belongs to the practice that created it, and you are entitled to a copy or a summary. The card is planned as an attested copy of the entries a clinic chooses to share, with your own log beside it. The clinic keeps its record. That framing is narrow on purpose, and it is what lets a practice share into a card without a fight with its insurer.
Who would be able to see it
You, and whoever you show it to. A card would live at its own private address that cannot be guessed, it would not be listed in search engines, and there would be no directory of animals anywhere on this site. Sharing would be a thing you do deliberately, one recipient at a time, for a limited time, and you could stop it.
A treating practice would get read access through a grant you start, with a short code or a QR from your phone or from the printed card, and the grant would expire in days rather than lasting forever. The microchip number would be used to recognise the same animal in two records, but never to grant access, because a chip can stay registered to a previous owner for years.
This page, the one you are reading, is the only public page about the card. It holds no information about any animal.
What to bring to a new vet today
None of the above exists yet. What you can do now is carry the same information yourself. A new clinician can act far faster on a written list than on memory, and the list below is what they will ask for.
- The microchip number, and which registry it is with.
- Every medicine the animal takes now: name, strength, how much, how often, and why.
- Anything the animal has reacted badly to: a drug, a vaccine, a food, an anesthetic.
- The date of the last vaccinations and which products were used, from the certificate if you have it.
- Surgeries and hospital stays, roughly when, and which practice did them.
- Recent weights, with dates. A steady loss over months is a finding a new vet cannot see in one visit.
- The name and phone number of the previous practice, so the new one can request the record.
You have a right to a copy of your animal’s record from the practice that holds it. Ask for it before you move rather than after; a practice that has closed is much harder to reach.
When
Not yet. The card is specified and being built, and it comes after the note and the discharge sheet, because a card that starts empty on the day you sign up is not worth carrying. The useful version begins with the history your practice already holds.
Questions people ask
Is the Glarda card the same as my vet's medical record?
No. The clinic keeps its own record, and in most places the law says that record belongs to the practice that wrote it. The card is planned as an attested copy of the entries a clinic chooses to share, plus what you write yourself. It would not replace the clinic's file and it would never claim to.
Could I write in the card myself?
Yes, in your own section. What you write, such as a weight, a symptom you noticed, or a dose you gave at home, would be kept apart from what a clinic writes and would be labelled as yours. A vet reading the card would always be able to tell which entries came from a practice and which came from you.
Who would be able to see my animal's card?
You, and whoever you choose to show it to. A card would live at a private address that cannot be guessed and is never listed by search engines. A practice would get read access for a limited time, started by you with a code or a QR, and that access would expire.
What would happen in an emergency if I cannot use my phone?
The spec includes an emergency read path, for the out-of-hours clinic in another city at two in the morning. How that works safely is the hardest single design question in the whole product, and it is being designed rather than promised. It carries no advertising of any kind.
Is the card available now?
No. It is specified and in the build order behind the clinical note and the discharge sheet. There is nothing to sign up for on this page and no waiting list.