Patients explained
What a patient record holds, and how animals connect to the people who own and care for them.
A patient is an animal under your care. The patient record is the animal's identity and history in one place: who it is, who's responsible for it, and what's happened to it over time.
What a patient record holds
- Identity — name, species, breed, sex, date of birth (which can be estimated), color, and identifiers like a microchip or tag number.
- Owners and care team — the contacts connected to this animal and how (owner, co-owner, trainer, farrier, referring vet).
- Measurements — a running history of weights and other vitals you record over time.
- Alerts — flags you want to see every time you open the record (allergies, a vaccination due, handling notes).
- History — the visits, services, and invoices tied to this animal.
Species and sex
The species controls some of how the record behaves. For horses, decavet shows the right words for sex automatically — Stallion, Mare, Gelding, and Spayed Mare — instead of the generic male/female/neutered labels. See Add a patient for the full list.
Your practice can manage which species it treats under Settings → Species.
Owners and the care team
A patient isn't owned by a single fixed field — it's connected to one or more contacts, each with a relationship. One of them is marked the primary owner (the default party you bill). Others can be co-owners or members of the care team such as a trainer or farrier.
Each connection can carry permissions, like who is allowed to authorize treatment. For a horse owned by several investors, a syndicate contact captures each member's ownership percentage — see Syndicate ownership.
Why people and animals are separate
Keeping the animal separate from its people means you can change an owner without touching the medical history, connect several people to one animal, and connect one person to many animals — all without duplicate records.
Status
A patient is Active, Deceased, or Archived. Marking status keeps your lists clean without erasing history. See Patient status.