How to use Qpaws

From your first activity to your dog's full story.

Qpaws is built for people who train with one dog or many. Canicross, mushing, bikejoring, skijoring – or simply long walks and an active dog life.

And everything in between: feeding, vaccines, medication, health, recovery and everyday care.

Qpaws tracks the work, keeps the records, and turns it all into your dog's story.

New to Qpaws – or just need a recap?

Start with the basics below. 
Six steps, and that's all you need to get going.

The rest of the guide is here whenever you want to know exactly how something works.

Are you working with dogs – as a trainer, dog walker, sitter, handler, kennel or breeder?  See how Qpaws works for professionals →

• The basics
• Share dog care
• Tracking
• Progress, goals and badges
• Qpaws Premium
• Coming from the old Qpaws?

1 · It starts with your dog

Every dog gets a profile – photo, breed, weight, status, history. Everything you do in Qpaws attaches to a dog, so nothing floats around loose. One dog on the sofa or eight in the yard: each one has its own story.

2 · Walk. Run. Mush. Repeat

Hit Start and track the session with GPS – canicross, bikejoring, skijoring, mushing with your team's positions on the line, or the daily walk.

Distance, route, pace, speed, elevation: all of it, live. And Qpaws doesn't care what's on your wrist – import straight from Garmin and Strava or other devices.

One button for everything. The big + starts a tracked activity, a manual session, a log or a post.

3 · The kilometres are half the story.

What happens between sessions decides how the next one goes. Weight, feeding, vaccines, medication, recovery, the odd proud moment – ten seconds to log, saved where it belongs: with the dog.

4 · A season. A career. A whole life.

Every session, log, photo and post lands on the Timeline – from you and everyone else who cares for the dog. Filter by dog, group or type. Keep it fed, and you're building something no notebook ever managed: a living history of your dog's life.

5 · Set a goal. Watch the rings fill.

A Quick goal repeats your target by day or week; a Custom goal plans specific days in the calendar. Aim for distance, time or sessions – the rings fill from what you actually log, badges drop as you go. Sharing the dog? There's a friendly leaderboard of who's done the most this month.

Good to know. The picker in the top-left corner decides whose progress you see – one dog, all your dogs, or a group. It follows you across Progress and Timeline.
Screen: Goals – repeating-goal ring + daily-plan calendar + leaderboard

6 · Your dog. Their people. All connected.

You don't have to manage everything alone. Invite the people who help care for your dog – family, a handler, a dog walker – so they can track, log and stay up to date. And gather people and dogs in groups: family, kennel, training partners, as many as you like.
Screen: split – caretakers around the dog / group list

That's the idea

Dog → Activity & care → History → Progress → People

You're ready to use Qpaws. Everything below is here for when you want the detail – starting with finding your way around.

The bottom bar: five tabs

Home

Your start screen: reminders, updates and your goals at a glance, then a feed of the latest from your dogs, caretakers and groups. Below that, Discover – activities and posts from the wider Qpaws world. Follow people, like, comment, steal their best training routes.

Overview

Your dog and group profiles: add, edit, and see status across every dog at a glance – who's injured, in heat, on medication or needs something special right now. Set a status in seconds from the quick dropdown, or while adding a log.

Progress

Graphs, comparisons with earlier periods and seasons, your most-used activity types, badges – and a friendly leaderboard of who's walked the dog most this month. Goals live here too.

Timeline

Everything in one stream: tracked walks, manual activities, logs, health entries and posts – for a whole dog's life. Filter by dog, group or type. This is the source of truth for everything that's ever happened with your dog.

Search

Find people to follow, dogs and groups – without leaving where you are.

The + button

Floating bottom right – the heart of everything you put into Qpaws.
Tap it and choose:

on the top line
When you're on home

top right shows

Me
Your avatar (top right) is your own profile.
everything about you and your dogs.

Notifications
this is where the up, if you receive badges, comments from someone in your groups or other information - new badges etc....

Menu and Settings
The ellipse menu (three dots) you can select

One switch controls what you see
The picker in the top-left corner is your global choice: one dog, all your dogs, or a group. Whatever you pick there is what Progress and Timeline show. One dog? You'll never think about it. Several dogs or groups? This is how you flip between them – everywhere, with one tap.

• Caretakers are attached to a dog – this is who can see and log for this dog.
• Groups are shared spaces for dogs and people – a family, kennel, training team, dog service or community.

The one rule to remember. Access to a dog always belongs to the dog, through its caretakers. Caretakers control access to the dog. Groups organise dogs and people around a shared context. A group admin can never give anyone more access to a dog than that dog's owner has set – and leaving a group doesn't change who can see your dog.
Caretakers – sharing a dog
Full access – for family, handlers and trusted people who share responsibility.

• Track activities and log daily care
• See and log health records
• Edit the dog's profile

Can't transfer or delete the dog – that stays with you.
Limited access – for a dog walker, a sitter, a neighbour.

• Track activities and add simple logs

No health records, can't edit the profile, can't manage access.
To invite a caretaker: open the dog's profile → Caretakers → Invite. Pick the dog(s), choose the access level, and send. You can change a caretaker's access level or remove them at any time from the dog's profile.
Groups
A group is a shared space for dogs and people. Make as many as you like – a group can be one person or many, with or without dogs. Think of them like group chats: you're in several, each for a different context, and nobody has to be in all of them.

• Family – share dog activities and care with family and friends
• Kennel – organise multiple dogs and handlers
• Training team – group dogs for training and racing, and follow their stats
• Dog services – sitters, walkers, groomers and others you use for your dogs
• Community – dog people who share a breed, a sport, a club or a neighbourhood
• Other – group dogs and people any way you like

The type doesn't lock you in. Pick the closest match – you can change everything later. A Training team might be Race Team A, your Tuesday canicross crew or a temporary race-weekend group. A Community might be built around a breed, a club or a neighbourhood.
You're in control: admins run groups, dog access is set separately on each dog, invites are personal, and you get a notification when someone in a group logs an activity or something happens with a dog you have access to.

Tracking: from Start to share card
Tracking is where Qpaws does its heaviest lifting. Precise GPS on detailed satellite and topographic maps, live numbers while you move, and a full breakdown when you're done – speed, pace per kilometre, elevation, ascent and descent, active time against pauses, even the weather you ran in. What no running app gives you is the other half: which dogs came along, what they pulled, where each one ran on the line. Built to hold up whether you're walking the block or running a team through the dark.
Starting an activity
Tap + → Start Activity, and set up the session in seconds:

• Pick the activity type. Walking, Running, Canicross, Canitrail, Mushing, Skijoring, Bikejoring, Kickbike/Scooter, Agility, Obedience – and more.
• Pick who's coming. One dog or a whole team – even dogs from other groups you're in. Add the group the session belongs to, and the other people who are along for the trip.
• Pick your equipment. Sled, ATV, bike, skis, pack – whatever you're running with, so your sessions are comparable later.

Then hit Start. During the session you get time, distance, speed and pace live – and a camera button for photos along the way.
Live sharing
Flip on Share live before you start, and your caretakers and group members can follow the trip in real time – your position on the map as you move. Good for safety, and honestly just fun to watch.
For dog walkers it's especially useful: the owners follow the walk automatically, and see photos and updates as they happen. Live tracking is part of Qpaws Premium.
After the session
This is where Qpaws goes beyond a regular activity tracker. Every session gets the full breakdown:

• Distance, total time, active time vs pauses
• Speed graph and average, moving, overall and max speed
• Pace – average and split per kilometre
• Elevation curve, total ascent and descent
• Weather during the session
• Which device tracked it (e.g. your Garmin watch)

You set the intensity level yourself, from Easy to Max – useful when you're planning training load across a season. And you can edit any detail after the activity.
Dog positions
Running a team? Lay out the line exactly as you ran it – lead, swing, team, wheel – and each dog sits in its own spot, all the way down to you at the back. Set it up before you start or adjust it afterwards; positions belong to that session, so tomorrow's line can look completely different.
Each dog then carries its own numbers from the run, including estimated energy burned. Over time you build a history of who ran where, how often, and with what workload.
Share cards
When a session is done, turn it into a share card: your photo with the activity, distance, duration and elevation laid over it, Qpaws-branded and ready for Instagram, Stories or a message. Pick a layout, share or save.
Import from Garmin and Strava
Qpaws doesn't care what's on your wrist. If you already track with a Garmin watch or log activities in Strava, bring those activities into Qpaws and attach them to your dogs.
To connect: tap the gear (top right) → Integrations → choose Garmin or Strava and sign in.
What gets imported: new activities from the moment you connect – with distance, time, route and the other stats your device recorded. After import, open the activity in Qpaws to attach the dog(s) that came along. Older, historical activities aren't imported.
Sync is one way. Activities flow from Strava into Qpaws – never the other way. Nothing you log in Qpaws (health records, logs, dogs) is sent to Strava or Garmin.
Offline and offline maps
Qpaws works fully offline: record activities, add logs and browse your dog's history without any signal – everything syncs by itself when you're back online.
Offline maps take it one step further. With Premium, Qpaws automatically downloads a large map area around you – in both satellite and topographic view. So if you choose to track without a connection, or you're deep in the wilderness and drift out of coverage by accident, you can still see exactly where you are and navigate on a real map.
Without a downloaded map, tracking still works – GPS doesn't need coverage. You'll get the full route, distance, pace and elevation; the map background simply fills in once you're back online.

Progress: goals and badges
Goals – Quick goals and Custom goals
Quick goal (repeating targets) Repeats the same target automatically. Choose who it's for (a dog, all dogs, or a group), the activity type, the target, and how often it repeats – daily or weekly – and whether it ever ends. Perfect for "5 km every day" or "three sessions a week".
Custom goal (a day-by-day plan) Open the calendar and set a target on the specific days you intend to train. See the month total at the top, and copy last month's plan as a starting point when a new month begins.
Three target types: Distance, Time, or Sessions. Each goal uses one type, and the rings are colour-coded: orange for distance, blue for time, purple for sessions.
The rings fill themselves. Progress always comes from what you actually track and log – you never type in "done" manually. A dashed ring is a planned day; a filling ring is a day in progress; a full ring is a target met.
Editing: tap any day in a Custom goal to change or remove its target. Quick goals can be edited or ended from the Goals screen. Switch on "Show on home tab" to keep your most important goal on the Home screen.
Badges
Badges are Qpaws' achievements. You don't apply for them and you can't buy them – they drop automatically as you and your dogs get things done.
Badges are earned per dog – and per group, so a whole group can chase a target together.
We're starting with distance and elevation badges: tough, fun milestones to chase, from the first kilometres to numbers you'll have to earn over a whole season. More badge types are on the way. They're year-round, not seasonal: summer kilometres count just as much as winter ones. You'll find your badges under Progress.

Premium
Most of Qpaws is free: dog profiles, GPS tracking, logs, the Timeline, goals, caretakers and groups.
Qpaws Premium adds:

• Live tracking – share your position in real time during an activity
• Offline maps – automatic map downloads for use without coverage
• Ad-free – no ads anywhere in the app

Pricing: Premium is available monthly or yearly. Current plans and pricing are always shown in the app.
Manage or cancel: subscriptions run through the App Store or Google Play. To change or cancel, open your phone's subscription settings – App Store: Settings → your name → Subscriptions; Google Play: Menu → Payments & subscriptions. Cancelling keeps Premium active until the end of the period you've paid for; your data is never affected.

Coming from the old Qpaws?
New look. Same dogs, same data. The app has been rebuilt underneath – it will feel different for a day and familiar by the second.
Your Qpaws history comes with you. Your dogs, activities, records and groups – teams are now called groups – are migrated to the new Qpaws. Log in with your existing account and pick up where you left off.
Built to feel faster. The new Qpaws has been rebuilt underneath, with faster navigation, maps and everyday interactions.
Works fully offline. Try it: airplane mode, out the door, track the walk.
Where things moved

That's Qpaws
You don't need to learn everything before you start. Add your dog. Track something. Log the things worth remembering. The rest will make sense as you go.

And before long, Qpaws becomes something more useful than another activity app: the living history of everything you do with your dog.

Questions, ideas or something not working as expected? Contact us at team@qpaws.com*.*

Updated on: 10/09/2026