The longer answers

Nothing is compulsory. A new journal starts with general observations and exercise, and everything else stays out of the way until you switch it on.

• Exercise. Hacking, schooling, jumping, in-hand work, long lines, lunge, hill work, gallops, turnout — and anything else you add. A lesson is a tick on top of whatever you were doing, so taught work stays separate from the rest.
• Observations. Appetite, drinking, droppings, urination, energy and behaviour, on one plain scale: normal, increased, reduced, none. You decide which of them you want to be asked about.
• Feed. Whether it was given, and whether it was given before work. Not what, not how much. Both switches are off until you want them.
• Weight and other readings. Entered when you take them and plotted in the order you took them.
• Care. Farrier, dentist, physio, saddler, vet, worming, vaccinations — or whatever your horse actually has, since you can add your own and hide the ones you do not. One register holds what is booked and what happened.
• Medication. Name, dose and frequency exactly as written on the label, the start and end, the reason, the instructions, and a photograph of the label.
• Episodes. An illness or an injury kept as a single thread — when it started, updates as it goes on, an end when there is one, photographs and video. More than one can run at a time.
• The horse itself. Things that belong to the horse rather than to a day, and that a vet has already told you. Recorded because you recorded them, never assumed and never combined into anything.

• The record, in order. What you wrote in March is still there in September, on the day you wrote it. When somebody asks when it started, the answer is written down rather than remembered.
• Weights, drawn out. The readings you entered, plotted against the dates you entered them. The line is your numbers and nothing else.
• A care register. When each thing was last done, and when the next one falls due on the interval you chose for that horse. Some things have no interval, and those simply record when they last happened.
• Reminders to book. A prompt about a month ahead and a chaser a fortnight before, because the point is getting it in the diary before they are full. Book it and both go quiet.
• Your data, out. You can export what you have written and take it elsewhere. It is your record of your horse.
• More than one horse. Several horses in one journal, each with their own settings, their own care intervals and their own record.

No, and it never will. It never scores, ranks, grades, interprets or draws a conclusion. Your observations sit side by side and you are the one who reads them.

Under the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966, diagnosing an animal — and giving advice based on that diagnosis — is work reserved to vets, and HorseDex does not do a vet's work. There is no laminitis score, no colic checker and no lameness grade, and there is not going to be one. It is a notebook that keeps its pages in order, and it is not a substitute for your vet.

• On the device. Everything you enter goes into a private database inside the app's own storage on your iPhone.
• An optional backup, to your iCloud. Off unless you switch it on. If you do, the copy goes to your own Apple storage under your own Apple Account — not to us, and we cannot reach it.
• Photographs travel; video does not. Photographs are included newest first, up to 200 MB in any one copy. Video never is, because one clip can outweigh years of writing. Anything left behind is named in the backup, and a restore tells you what did not come back and which phone it is still on.
• A lock, if you want one. Face ID, Touch ID or your device passcode. The app is told only whether the check passed; it never sees the rest.
• Delete it and it is gone. Deleting the app removes its database from your phone. If you switched the backup on, delete that copy from your iCloud storage too.

The privacy policy says the same thing at greater length.

There is no account. No email address, no password, no sign-up, nothing to verify. You open it and start writing.

There is no server either. Your records are written to your own phone and stay there. Nothing is sent to us, and there is nothing of yours for us to read.

Nothing is collected. No analytics, no tracking, no advertising and no third-party kits inside the app. Its App Store privacy label is intended to read Data Not Collected. Nothing is sold or shared, because nothing is held.

One honest exception, and it is this website rather than the app: if you ask to be kept posted, the website stores the email address you typed in so that it can email you. That list lives on the website and the app has no idea it exists. The privacy policy sets out what is stored and for how long.

Nothing. Free, with no in-app purchases, no subscription and nothing held back behind one.

HorseDex is being tested and is not on the App Store. There is no release date here because none has been set. When it is available, the front page will say so.

What has changed in each build handed to a tester is listed on the updates page. If you would rather be told than keep checking, leave your email address and I will write to you when it reaches the App Store.

HorseDex started as a journal for a single horse with a long-term condition, kept daily by his owner. Every field in it exists because somebody who does this every morning asked for it, and a few of the things it refuses to do are there because she said no. It is made in the United Kingdom by Toby Kalkman, working alone.

Write to support@horsedex.co.uk and a person will read it. There is more on the support page.