Caring for a Three Legged Dog or Cat

I did keep two files, but I don't think they are as sophisticated as what micki z has in mind.

Basically, one XLS, and one Word Doc.

Let me give you the backgound of the reason why I needed the spreadsheet (which has two worksheets) ... 

There were so many supplements to give Genie separately, it had started to become very unpleasant and stressful for both of us every pilling session.  About a month after amputation, I found a brand http://www.canprev.ca, which had three products: (1) Immuno-Pro, (2), Cold-Pro, (3) Healthy Lungs.  They were just perfect.  Three of them together could cover a broad range of suppl. she needed.  I picked Healthy Lungs also because I was anticipating her lungs would get hit first. (who would have thought that when I guarded the front door, and the thieves got in from the back door!)

Anyway, the idea was to breakdown the amount for each ingredient for each product in the spreadsheet, and then I could re-jiggle the number of capsules to be given depended on different senario. (one worksheet was for just the CanPrev products)

There were a few that neither the CanPrev products had, e.g. CoQ10, Milk Thistle.  OR some that I want extra mega dose on top of what CanPrev contained, e.g. B-complex.  All these were also documented in another worksheet.

In April, we thought spondylosis was the cause of her weakness in the left hind leg, so I also added a varieties of joint supplements... glucosamine, sea mussel, dmg, natural herb for pain relieving, and what not.  So I had to re-jiggle the whole regime again.   (Joints suppl are in the second sheet as in the additional suppl.)

As for the documenting of her progress (as if there was!), and the daily schedule, all the activities were recorded in a Word Doc.  Just plain simple one paragraph for each day.  Though, I have some special colour coding for each supplement and meds, so I knew just by a glance what I missed during the day.   Now I check back, poor girl had to endure so many pills during her last month.

If you are still interested, I'd be happy to share with you.  Perhaps I forward to Jerry, and have him to post it on the website somewhere?

micki z,

If you use Excel, it will a bit tough to capture one-to-many relationship (i.e. one day to multiple meds, or supplements) on a simple spreadsheet, unless you don't want to keep track of the frequency of each med/suppl (i.e. using one free-text field), or unless you build lookups in the spreadsheet.

Perhaps consider using Access?  It is more straightforward and easier to maintain. With two tables, you would be able to create a basic log for each day.   Just a suggestion...

Header table: DATE, PROGRESS RATING (scale of 1-10, in your opinion how well he does for the day), a FREE TEXT field so you can type in your comments for his daily progress.

Detail table: TIME, Meds/Suppl Description, Strength, Form, Qty.

Once you have all the raw records, you can massage the data, export to Excel, sort/group them in any which way you like, query them based on different criteria.