If a pet is shared with you through family sharing, you can chat with a vet about them too — as long as the owner has given you consultation access. Here's how it works for everyone involved.
What a family member needs
Consultation permission on that pet, granted by the pet's owner. Without it, tapping a vet chat entry point shows Vet chat access restricted — "You don't have permission to access vet or AI chat for this pet. Please contact the pet owner for access."
You do not need your own paid plan. What matters is that the pet's owner is on Premium.
Whose chats get used
A family member's chat comes out of the pet owner's allowance of 2 included vet chats per month — not their own. The two chats are a household pool, so anyone with permission can use them up.
On the Waiting for a Vet and Chat summary screens, the Pet Owner card carries a Booked by family member label and the booker's photo, so it's clear who started the conversation.
One open chat per pet, household-wide
The one-open-vet-chat-per-pet rule applies across the whole family. If a family member already has a chat open about a pet, nobody else can start a second one for that pet until it finishes.
Who can see what
| Person | What they can see |
|---|---|
| The person who started the chat | The chat from the moment they book it, all the way through |
| The pet's owner | A chat a family member started, once it has ended — that is, once its summary exists |
| The pet's owner, for their own chats | Chats they started themselves are always visible to them |
Please note: photos and files exchanged in any vet chat are saved to that pet's document library, which is visible to everyone with access to that pet.
If someone leaves the family
When a person loses access to a pet, they're removed from any open chats for that pet. If they try to open one they'll see You no longer have access to this pet — "You're not currently a member of the family that owns this pet." — and "If this is unexpected, ask the pet owner to re-add you to their family."
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