Can I enter old weigh ins taken before I started using the app?

Yes, and it is worth doing if you have the dates. Every weigh in is recorded with its own date, so you can rebuild the history from health record books or from visit invoices, where the weight is almost always noted. Rebuild in chronological order and note that it was taken at the clinic: the clinic scale and your home scale never give exactly the same number, and knowing which is which stops you reading a jump that is not there.

My animal is not a dog or a cat: is the measurements page still useful?

Partly. The weight series works for any species and remains the most important information, together with the comparison between animals. The growth curve and the two body scores do not work, because the reference charts and the scoring scales have been published and validated for dogs and cats only. The card states the reason explicitly rather than showing an empty chart, so you know you are not doing anything wrong.

What is the difference between the body score and the calculated ideal weight?

The body score is a hands on assessment, independent of the scale: it describes how the animal is built, not how much it weighs. The estimated ideal weight is an arithmetic consequence of the score, and it is only calculated when the score is above five and you have also entered the current weight. It is a starting estimate, useful for the order of magnitude of the goal, and it should always be discussed with your vet before it becomes a reduced ration.

Can weigh ins from two animals get mixed up?

No. Every weigh in belongs to the profile you record it on, and there is no single list where you enter one without choosing an animal first. The comparison reads the separate series and draws them together for display only, without merging them. The possible error is human rather than systemic: recording a weigh in on the wrong profile, which you avoid by checking the name at the top before saving.

How often is it worth repeating the body scores?

For a healthy adult, every three months is enough, because body composition changes slowly. During an agreed weight loss programme it is worth repeating them monthly alongside the weigh in, because it is the combination of the two that tells you whether you are losing fat or muscle. In an older animal or one with a chronic condition the muscle score deserves a monthly look even when the weight seems stable.

Using Animiyo20 minLevel: BeginnerUpdated on August 5, 2026

Tracking weight and reading the growth curve

How to record weigh ins, what the growth curve actually shows, how the two body scores are calculated and why the reference sometimes does not appear.

Audience: Pet owners
Species: Dog, Cat
Scope: Valid everywhere

What you need before you start

Una scheda animale già creata, con specie e data di nascita compilate
Una bilancia adatta al peso dell'animale, anche una pesapersone se puoi tenerlo in braccio
Per un cane, una stima del peso da adulto data dal veterinario o dall'allevatore
Almeno due pesate a distanza di qualche settimana, se vuoi già vedere una tendenza

Weight is the one clinical parameter anybody can measure at home with sufficient precision, which is exactly why it is the one most often wasted. A number read once a year in the consulting room says nothing; the same measurement repeated every fortnight with the same method becomes the most useful historical series an animal owns. On the measurements page weight feeds three separate tools: the growth curve for puppies and kittens, the two scores that describe body composition and muscle mass, and the comparison between several animals in the same household. This guide explains where each thing is recorded, what each tool returns, and in which cases the reference curve does not appear, because those cases are more common than they look.

Where weight is recorded and where it is read

The two places are easy to confuse, and the confusion leads to recording once and then never finding the data again. The weight field on the profile is a snapshot; the historical series is a different thing and lives in the animal's weight tab.

The weight field in the pet form holds a single value: when you change it, the previous one is not kept.
The weight tab inside the animal keeps every weigh in as a separate entry, with a date and an optional note.
The measurements page reads that series and turns it into a curve, scores and comparisons: it is a place to look, not a place to enter data.
The target weight from the profile is reused as the expected adult weight in a dog's growth curve, so it has a second purpose beyond weight loss.
The unit is the kilogram and cannot be changed: there is no pounds view, so anyone using a scale in pounds has to convert before entering.

Recording a weigh in under a minute

Weigh under the same conditions as last time
Before the morning meal is the easiest thing to repeat. After a long walk or a big drink the number moves enough to blur a real trend.
Open the animal and go to the weight tab
It sits in the measurements group of tabs, alongside feeding, hydration, exercise and grooming.
Enter the date and the value in kilograms
Decimals are allowed and they matter: in an adult cat a change of two or three hundred grams is already information, and rounding to the whole kilogram erases it.
Add a note only if it explains the number
Weighed after clipping, weighed with the collar on, weighed on a different scale. These are the notes that stop you mistaking an artefact for weight loss six months later.
Save, and do not go back to tidy old entries
A wrong measurement is recognisable from context and should be left where it is, annotated if necessary. Cleaning the series after the fact produces a curve that is pretty and false.
Open the measurements page to see the effect
With a single weigh in there is nothing to read yet. From the second one you get a direction, from the third one a trend.

What the growth curve shows

The curve compares your real weigh ins against the centiles published in the WALTHAM growth charts for dogs and cats. The horizontal axis is age in weeks calculated from the date of birth, the vertical axis is weight in kilograms, and the shaded band represents the nine reference centiles. Your weigh ins are drawn on top of that band.

Before anything appears you have to answer two questions on the card itself: the sex, chosen from male, female and not stated, and for a dog the expected adult weight, which selects the size band. The adult weight is proposed automatically if you filled in the target weight on the profile. The sex, by contrast, is not saved on the profile: it has to be selected again every time you open the page, and that is a known limitation of the screen.

What the growth assessment returns and how to read each number.
Result	What it means
Estimated centile	Where the animal sits compared with peers of the same species, sex and size band
Standardised score	How far the weigh in is from the median, in distribution units rather than kilograms
Difference from the median	The gap from the fiftieth centile expressed both in kilograms and as a percentage
Expected adult weight	The projection obtained by staying on the same centile until the end of the chart
Position relative to the band	Whether the weigh in falls below, inside or above the published centiles

When the curve does not appear, and why

The card always states the reason it cannot show a reference, rather than leaving an empty chart. There are eight reasons and most of them are fixed by filling in one field.

Reasons the reference is missing and what to do about each.
Reason	What to do
Species with no published charts	Nothing to do: the charts exist only for dogs and cats
Sex not stated	Select it on the card: the charts are separate for males and females
Expected adult weight missing, in a dog	Enter the estimate on the card or the target weight on the profile
Giant breed dog	Nothing to do: above 40 kg of expected adult weight no chart is published
Date of birth missing	Fill it in on the pet profile, even as a stated estimate
No valid weigh in	Record at least one weight greater than zero
Age earlier than the start of the chart	Wait: the chart begins in the first weeks of life
Age later than the end of the chart	Nothing to do: once growth ends the curve loses meaning and weight and scores remain

Dog size bands are chosen from the expected adult weight: up to 6.5 kg, from 6.5 to 9 kg, from 9 to 15 kg, from 15 to 30 kg, from 30 to 40 kg. Above 40 kg no chart is published, because variability between giant breeds is too high for an average curve to be informative. Cats have no bands: species and sex are enough.

The two body scores and what they are for

Weight alone does not distinguish a muscular animal from a fat one, nor healthy weight loss from a loss of muscle mass. The two scores fill exactly that gap and each takes a couple of minutes, done with your hands on the animal rather than with your eyes.

Structure of the two scores available on the measurements page.
Score	What it asks	What it returns
Body condition	Three assessments: ribs on palpation, waist seen from above, abdominal profile seen from the side	A value from 1 to 9, the matching band and, above five, an estimate of excess fat and ideal weight
Muscle condition	Four palpated sites: spine, scapulae, skull and wings of the ilium	The worst grade among the four, on four levels from normal to severe loss, plus how many sites are involved

In body condition the three answers are averaged and rounded: from 1 to 3 the band is under ideal, from 4 to 5 it is ideal, from 6 to 9 it is over ideal.
Each point above five corresponds to roughly ten percent of excess weight over the ideal weight, and that is how the card estimates ideal weight when you also enter the current weight.
If the three answers are far apart the card flags it: it means one of the three assessments should be repeated more carefully.
In muscle condition the worst site wins rather than the average, because loss starts along the spine and is more variable elsewhere.
The two scores are independent: an animal can be over ideal for fat and still be losing muscle, and that combination deserves an appointment.
Both scores are available for dogs and cats only, because the scales have been validated for those two species alone.

History, multi pet comparison and known limits

The history card gathers every recorded assessment and shows the mean, minimum, maximum, number of entries and the direction of the trend. It is the view worth opening before an appointment, because it condenses months of observation into a few lines.

The multi pet comparison draws the weight curves of two or more household animals on the same chart, with a checkbox to include or exclude each one and a legend giving the name and number of weigh ins. It needs at least two registered animals with at least one weigh in each, and it is a visual comparison: it produces no automatic analysis of the differences.

There is no export from the measurements page: to take the data out you use the per animal export, which includes the weight series.
There is no automatic weight reading from a connected scale or from a photograph of a display.
There is no target weight line drawn over the growth curve: the target weight selects the size band, it does not mark a goal on the chart.
The sex selected for the curve is not stored on the profile and has to be chosen again on each visit.
The growth charts cover the growth phase: once the chart ends, the weight series and the body scores remain useful.

Frequently asked questions

Can I enter old weigh ins taken before I started using the app?: Yes, and it is worth doing if you have the dates. Every weigh in is recorded with its own date, so you can rebuild the history from health record books or from visit invoices, where the weight is almost always noted. Rebuild in chronological order and note that it was taken at the clinic: the clinic scale and your home scale never give exactly the same number, and knowing which is which stops you reading a jump that is not there.
My animal is not a dog or a cat: is the measurements page still useful?: Partly. The weight series works for any species and remains the most important information, together with the comparison between animals. The growth curve and the two body scores do not work, because the reference charts and the scoring scales have been published and validated for dogs and cats only. The card states the reason explicitly rather than showing an empty chart, so you know you are not doing anything wrong.
What is the difference between the body score and the calculated ideal weight?: The body score is a hands on assessment, independent of the scale: it describes how the animal is built, not how much it weighs. The estimated ideal weight is an arithmetic consequence of the score, and it is only calculated when the score is above five and you have also entered the current weight. It is a starting estimate, useful for the order of magnitude of the goal, and it should always be discussed with your vet before it becomes a reduced ration.
Can weigh ins from two animals get mixed up?: No. Every weigh in belongs to the profile you record it on, and there is no single list where you enter one without choosing an animal first. The comparison reads the separate series and draws them together for display only, without merging them. The possible error is human rather than systemic: recording a weigh in on the wrong profile, which you avoid by checking the name at the top before saving.
How often is it worth repeating the body scores?: For a healthy adult, every three months is enough, because body composition changes slowly. During an agreed weight loss programme it is worth repeating them monthly alongside the weigh in, because it is the combination of the two that tells you whether you are losing fat or muscle. In an older animal or one with a chronic condition the muscle score deserves a monthly look even when the weight seems stable.

What to do next

Record weight in the animal's dedicated tab rather than only in the profile field, always on the same scale and at the same time of day. Open the measurements page to read the curve, remembering to state the sex and, for a dog, the expected adult weight, otherwise no reference appears. Add the two body scores every three months, always filled in by the same person, and use the history view as the summary you show your vet before an appointment.