About

Why MaxVet exists

MaxVet didn’t begin in a boardroom. It began with one dog called Max, an owner who couldn’t answer three simple questions across a consulting table — and, a few years later, a vet who said the words that started all of this.

One dog, and three questions

I’m Jay, MaxPet’s founder. In May 2022 my wife and I brought home a Havamalt puppy — Max — so small he fit in the palm of one hand. In early 2023 he developed colitis, and we arrived at the vet hospital frightened and guilty. The vet asked me three simple questions:

I couldn’t answer a single one. You will have watched an owner do exactly that more times than you can count — trying, and failing, to recall the baseline of an animal they love, at the worst possible moment to be asked.

From a shoebox of scrap paper to a platform

I’m Autistic and I have ADHD, and when I care about something I go all the way in. I began logging everything about Max, and spent hundreds of hours reading the peer-reviewed veterinary and nutrition science so I understood what I was looking at. It was meticulous — and, at first, a complete mess of scraps of paper, spreadsheets and text messages. So, with no background in development, I built somewhere to keep it, and printed it out for every appointment.

In early 2026, Max’s own vet told me the thing that started MaxVet: the record I kept on Max would be genuinely useful to him — if he had it for every patient.

What MaxVet is — and what it isn’t

MaxVet gives you the owner-logged history before the animal reaches your table: the baseline, the trends, the details owners forget under pressure. It is grounded in published methods — the Witzel body-composition equations, FEDIAF/NRC energy figures, and tie-corrected Spearman trend analysis — all set out openly on our Science page.

It is decision support, and only that. It does not diagnose, it does not treat, and it never replaces your clinical examination or judgement. Much of the data is owner-entered, with all the caveats that carries, and you remain in full control of every clinical decision. What MaxVet does is make sure that when those three questions come up, the answer is already in front of you.

I never imagined this would be my job — but it is now, and I’d be glad to have your practice alongside us, so that together we can improve pet health across the UK.

— Jay Shepherd
Founder
MaxPet Limited