Every species

Pet care is not dogs and cats.

Species on Petworking is an extensible taxonomy, so each one carries its own fields, and no animal is ever recorded as Other. A rabbit is not a small dog. A tank is not a note.

There were about 12.58 million pets in Canada in 2024 that were neither dogs nor cats. Almost every product in this category treats them as an afterthought, and that is a data-model decision rather than an oversight: an "Other" dropdown is what happens when species is a label instead of a schema.

Population figures: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Pet food trends in Canada, 2025. Data year 2024.

What actually differs

Species changes the data model, not the icon. These are the seven groups where the fields genuinely diverge.

Dogs and cats

Dog · Cat

The species every product covers. Rabies on a government register where the jurisdiction holds one, DHPP or FVRCP from a practice record, weight from whoever recorded it.

Fields it carries

Vaccination schedules, weight and body condition, dental history, parasite prevention, breed and coat for grooming, temperament and handling notes.

Rabbits and small mammals

Rabbit · Guinea pig · Hamster · Gerbil · Mouse · Rat · Chinchilla · Hedgehog

Only the rabbit has a routine vaccination schedule. The others carry a health check instead, and the record says which rather than inventing a vaccine.

Fields it carries

RHDV2 and myxomatosis for rabbits, hay and food intake, stool and cecotrope observations, dental records, bonding, housing and enrichment.

Birds

Budgerigar · Cockatiel · African grey parrot · Macaw · Conure · Canary · Chicken · and the rest, each with its own mutation or subspecies

Weight is the vital sign, taken far more often than in a dog, because a bird hides illness until it cannot. The record is built around a weight series rather than an annual visit. A budgerigar weighed in grams and an African grey weighed in hundreds of grams are not the same chart.

Fields it carries

Weight, food and water, droppings observations, molt, feather and plucking observations, egg laying, enrichment, sleep, cage maintenance.

Reptiles

Bearded dragon · Leopard gecko · Ball python · Russian tortoise · Blue-tongue skink · and the rest, each with its own morph field

The enclosure is the care, so a habitat is its own record. And a bearded dragon is not a ball python: one needs basking temperature, UVB and diet composition, the other needs a hot side, a cool side and prey size. Grouping them would lose both.

Fields it carries

Feed offered and accepted or refused, shed or molt quality, retained shed, weight and growth, calcium and D3, temperature, humidity, UVB, substrate, brumation.

Amphibians

Axolotl · Dart frog · Pacman frog · Tiger salamander · and the rest, each with its own morph or locality

Kept like a reptile by the software that lumps them together, and kept like a fish in practice. An axolotl lives in water with chemistry to test; a dart frog lives in a planted vivarium where the locality it came from is a conservation fact, not a colour.

Fields it carries

Water parameters where aquatic, humidity and misting where terrestrial, temperature, feed offered and accepted, weight, shed or slough, locality, and the enclosure as its own record.

Fish

Betta · Goldfish · Discus · Clownfish · Guppy · Koi · and the rest, each with its own variety or strain

A tank is the patient. Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are the record, and a parameter series matters more than any single reading, so the habitat carries its own chemistry log.

Fields it carries

Tank or system, volume, stock, temperature, pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, GH, KH, TDS, phosphate, salinity, CO2, water changes, quarantine, treatments.

Invertebrates

Tarantula · Jumping spider · Hermit crab · Praying mantis · Isopod · Snail · and the rest, each with its own species or colour line

Filed with fish by software that assumes anything unusual lives in water, and almost none of them do. A tarantula has no ammonia reading. What it has is a moult, and a moult is the whole clinical picture: refusing food for weeks beforehand is normal, and handling during it can kill.

Fields it carries

Enclosure and substrate depth, humidity, temperature, moult date and interval, premoult refusal, feeder type and size, feed accepted or refused, leg span or shell size, rehousing, and the enclosure as its own record.

Ferrets

Ferret

Distemper and rabies, on a schedule of their own, plus an adrenal and insulinoma history that no dog or cat record has a field for.

Fields it carries

Distemper, rabies, weight, adrenal and insulinoma history, dental records, litter habits, bonding, housing.

Equines and livestock

Horse · Donkey · Miniature horse · Goat · Pig

The longest routine schedule of any species on the platform, plus a farrier cycle, a dental cycle and a deworming cycle that all run independently.

Fields it carries

Tetanus, West Nile, EEE and WEE, dental, farrier, deworming, feed and supplements, workouts, competition, transport, stable or boarding history.

Most of these have no routine vaccine

Guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, mice, rats, chinchillas and hedgehogs, and almost everything in the reptile, fish, amphibian and invertebrate groups. Petworking does not invent a schedule for them, and it does not state a number either, because the taxonomy has no ceiling to count to.

What they carry instead

A health check or a quarantine clearance, dated, with the practice that performed it. The stamp says which, so a reader can tell a vaccination from an examination at a glance rather than assuming.

Why this matters more than it sounds

A blank vaccination field on a species with no vaccine looks identical to a missed vaccination on a species that has one. Unknown stays unknown here, and an absent measurement is never shown as a normal result.

A habitat is a first-class record

For a fish, a reptile, an amphibian or an invertebrate, the environment is not context around the animal. It is the care. A tank with rising ammonia is a clinical event, and it happens to the system rather than to one fish.

So a habitat gets its own record with its own chemistry log, its own maintenance intervals and its own stock list, and the animals reference it. That is why an aquatics business can run its quarantine system on Petworking at all, and it is the single largest reason a generic pet product cannot serve these species.

Professions this reaches

Exotics and reptile specialists, aquatics and aquarium businesses, avian practices, farriers, stables, breeders and sanctuaries.

Each gets its own module on the same core, so a reptile business is not configuring a grooming product.

Add whatever you keep

A name and a species is enough to make a passport, and the fields that follow are the ones that species actually needs.

Whatever kind of pet you share your life with, they belong here.

No animal becomes “Other.”

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