Your pet's appearance

Your pet’s appearance is how people recognise it: a finder describing a stray, a buyer reading a listing, a groomer checking they have the right dog. United Pet Club records it area by area. A dog has a coat, eyes and a nose. A bird has plumage, eyes, a beak and legs. A fish has its skin. Each area gets its own colours and patterns, and the pet as a whole gets its markings, such as a blaze or white socks.

Listings of your pet copy what you set here, so this is the one place to keep it up to date.

Where to find it

• Adding a pet: the Appearance part of the Profile step of Pets → Add a pet. Choose the species (and the breed) first: the choices depend on them.
• An existing pet: open the pet, choose Edit, and scroll to the Appearance card. Press Save at the bottom of the form when you’re done.

One section per area

The picker shows one section for each colour area your pet’s species has, in the order that matters most for that species. The first section (the coat, or the plumage for a bird, or the skin for a fish) is open. Select another section’s title to open it. A closed section shows what is recorded in it, so you can check everything at a glance.

Every choice inside a section belongs to that area only, and the labels say which one: Coat: colours, Coat: patterns, Eyes: colours, Eyes: patterns and so on. A merle coat with blue eyes is a pattern in the coat section and a colour in the eyes section. Nothing is recorded for the animal as a whole except its markings (below).

Species	Areas you’ll see (examples)
Dog	Coat, eyes, nose, paw pads, skin, tongue
Cat	Coat, eyes, nose, paw pads, skin
Horse	Coat, mane and tail, eyes, skin, hooves
Bird	Plumage, eyes, beak, legs; comb, earlobes and skin for chickens
Fish, reptile	Skin, eyes

Colours

Tap a colour to add it. The first colour you pick is the main colour and carries a 1, the next a 2, and so on, up to four per area. Tap a picked colour again to take it off; the next one becomes the main colour. Each colour shows a small swatch. A two-tone colour such as bay or agouti has a split swatch.

With a breed, the colours that breed’s standards name come first. The rest of the species’ colours are folded away under Show more colours. Your pet doesn’t have to match its breed standard: open the full list and pick what your pet really looks like. A colour you picked always stays visible, even when the list is folded. A mixed breed, or a pet with no breed recorded, sees the whole list straight away.

Patterns

Below the colours, pick up to three patterns for the area: brindle, tabby, merle, piebald, pointed, roan, barred and so on. The first is the main pattern. Each pattern’s swatch is drawn in your pet’s own colours, on the part it belongs to: a marbled eye is drawn as an eye, a spotted tongue as a tongue.

Patterns are optional. A nose, eye or coat of one even colour needs only its colour. For a nose you can also pick Solid to say so outright.

Patterns that go together, and ones that don’t. Patterns stack: a blue merle tricolour is Tricolor and Merle, a brindle boxer with white is Brindle and Piebald. Some never go together, and the picker knows which:

• Solid means one colour all over, so it never sits beside another pattern;
• one pattern already includes the other: a double merle is a merle, a lynx point is a pointed tabby;
• two patterns are one or the other: brindle or reverse brindle, bicolour or tricolour, one tabby type per cat, one marking per fancy rat.

When you pick a pattern that can’t go with one you already picked, the older one comes off, even if the area already has three. A note says which one (“Took off Merle, which can’t go with Double merle”), and Undo puts it back.

The colours in a pattern

Many patterns are made of more than one colour. A tabby has a base colour and the colour of its markings. A pointed cat has a body colour and a points colour. A brindle has a base and stripes. When you pick such a pattern, a small Colours in the … panel opens under it with one choice for each part, so “cream with seal points” and “seal with cream points” are never mixed up.

• Some parts are filled in for you. A brindle’s stripes start as black, and you can change them.
• Some parts never change. A piebald’s white areas are always white, and the panel says so.
• A colour you choose for a part is added to the area’s colours if it isn’t there yet.

Eyes: the same, or each one different

Some pets have a different colour in each eye: a husky with one blue and one brown eye, or an odd-eyed white cat. The Eyes section asks first:

• Both eyes the same (the default). Pick the eye colour as you would any other colour.
• Each eye different. The colour chips give way to two choices, Left eye and Right eye. Both start with the colour you had already picked, so you only change the eye that differs.

Left and right are your pet’s own. When you face your pet, its left eye is on your right. Vets record eyes the same way, so a finder or a vet reads your record correctly.

The closed Eyes section then reads, for example, Left eye: Blue, Right eye: Brown. Switch back to Both eyes the same and the left eye’s colour is kept as the eye colour.

A partly coloured iris (one eye with a wedge or fleck of another colour) is still a pattern: pick Sectoral (or Central heterochromia for a ring round the pupil) under the eye patterns.

See it drawn as you pick

Each area that has a drawing (the coat, the eyes, the nose for a dog) shows a Live preview of your pet beside the choices, or above them on a phone. It changes with every tap:

• Before you pick anything, the outline is grey.
• With colours only, your pet is drawn in its main colour.
• With patterns, each pattern is drawn in your pet’s colours. A black, tan and white tricolour looks like one, and a second pattern gets its own drawing next to it.

The same drawing appears, small, beside the area’s title when the section is closed.

Not sure what a pattern looks like? Rest the pointer on any colour, pattern or marking (or move to it with the keyboard) and a larger drawing opens. A pattern is drawn in your pet’s colours, with the names of its parts underneath, for example Base color · Patch color for a harlequin. On a phone, pick it and look at the live preview instead.

Helpful hints from colour genetics

Some colours go together. A liver dog always has a liver nose. A merle dog often has blue eyes. The picker uses what’s known about each species to help you, but never decides for you:

• Filled in for you. When a colour you pick means another area can only be one colour, and that area is still empty, it’s filled in. You’ll see a note such as Filled in from the coat (Liver) with an Undo link.
• Suggested. When a colour or pattern usually comes with something in another area, that area shows a Suggested chip. Tap it to add the suggestion.
• Check this. When two choices don’t normally go together, such as a black nose on a liver dog, you’ll see a short warning. You can still save: some pets really are unusual.

Markings

Under the areas, Markings lists the spots that tell your pet apart: a blaze, a star, white socks, a mask. Choose Add a marking, then set its colour (many markings start as white) and, if you like, where it is, such as left front paw. Up to twelve. Remove one with the × next to it.

Coat type and adult size

Dogs and cats also have a coat type. A mixed-breed dog has an adult size: how big it will be when fully grown. A purebred dog’s size comes from its breed and is shown, not asked.

In other languages

Colour, pattern, area and marking names appear in the language you use United Pet Club in. What you record is stored the same way in every language, so someone who reads your pet’s profile or listing in another language sees the same colours in theirs.