Health tips for a pet

Breed health tips are the same for every dog of that breed. This endpoint picks tips for one pet: it starts from its breed's vet-reviewed tips and adds tips written for that pet's life stage and what its photos show. Use it for a monthly "something for Buddy" message, or a tips card on the pet's profile.

Before you start

You need a pet with at least one photo and, ideally, a breed. See Create a pet.

1. Get tips

curl -H "x-api-key: YOUR-API-KEY" "https://api.thedogapi.com/v1/pets/{pet_id}/health-tips?include_sources=true"

{
  "items": [
    {
      "id": "Xk2p9QmT1a",
      "category": "Disease Prevention",
      "title": "Hip and elbow screening",
      "description": "…",
      "tip_type": "breed_standard",
      "sources": ["https://…"]
    },
    {
      "id": "b7Lw0RzN4e",
      "category": "Exercise",
      "title": "Keep walks steady as he matures",
      "description": "…",
      "tip_type": "personalised"
    }
  ],
  "generated_at": "2026-10-06T03:20:11.000Z"
}

There are two kinds of tip, and you should present them differently:

tip_type	Where it comes from	Sources	Vet reviewed
breed_standard	Our curated breed dataset, the same tips as GET /health-tips/breed/{breed_id}	Yes, with include_sources=true	Yes
personalised	Written for this pet by the model, from its breed, life stage, body condition, muscle condition and photos	No	No

Up to five personalised tips come back, one per category where it can: Exercise, Nutrition, Health Monitoring, Disease Prevention and Behavioral Health. They favour categories the breed tips don't already cover.

2. Options

Parameter	Default	What it does
include_seeded	true	Include the breed tips. Set false for personalised tips only.
include_sources	false	Add sources to breed tips.
lang	en	Language for the tips, as a two-letter code.

3. When tips change

Tips are saved on the pet and reused until new photos arrive, so calling again is cheap. Add a photo and the next call writes a fresh set. Each combination of lang and include_seeded is saved separately.

Better inputs make better tips. Run body condition, estimated age or breed identification first if you can, because the tips use their results.

Showing them to owners

• Label personalised tips as general guidance, not advice for this pet's condition.
• Show sources with breed tips where you have room. Owners trust a tip more when they can see where it came from.
• Don't use a tip to suggest the pet has a condition. For anything that looks like a symptom, point the owner to their vet.

Switching it off

pet_health_tips on the capabilities list.