Your vet meets your puppy for minutes at a time; you watch her for the other twenty-four hours of every day. The record you build across her first weeks is how your observations reach the appointment in usable form — dates and weights instead of impressions, documents already gathered instead of promised for next time.
Start With the Paper Trail She Arrived With
File the documents from her breeder or rescue first, because they anchor everything else: the contract or adoption papers, microchip number and registration confirmation, the vaccination record showing products and dates, worming history with the products used, and any vet check notes from before she came home. Add insurance details if you take out a policy. Photograph each document as a backup, and keep the originals together in one folder. If a piece is missing — a worming date nobody wrote down, for instance — ask for it now, while the breeder or rescue can still find it easily.
Keep Your Own Dated Notes From Day One
Your notes cover what no document does: feeding amounts and appetite, weight at weekly intervals, toilet training progress, sleep patterns, and behaviour as it emerges. Date every entry, because a vet reads a dated sequence as evidence and an undated recollection as a guess. Note anything unusual the day it happens — a cough, loose stools, a night of restlessness, a fright at a new sound — even if it resolves by morning. Patterns that matter medically often look like isolated quirks until the dates line them up side by side.
Record Milestones and First Reactions Too
Alongside the health notes, capture the developmental picture: first successful recall, first car ride and how she coped, reactions to visitors, handling, and grooming practice, and the cues she has learned so far. This helps your vet judge whether her social development is on track for her age, and it gives the practice a handling picture — a puppy already comfortable having paws and ears touched is a calmer patient. Note fears honestly rather than hopefully; a puppy frightened by something specific is information for both training and future vet visits.
Arrive at the Appointment Ready to Hand It Over
Before each early visit, skim your notes and list the questions they raise, in the order they worry you. Bring the folder — or have the whole record ready to show — rather than relying on remembering under the pressure of a wriggling puppy. Shared puppy care runs more clearly when Care Teams in KinsLe names who handles each feeding, weigh-in, or note, alerts that person, and timestamps the finished job.