Behaviour assessments

A behaviour assessment is how you turn "the trial day went fine" into a record the whole team can rely on. When assessments are enabled for your organisation, every new dog must pass one before daycare bookings are allowed.

How the gate works

Assessments are switched on at the organisation level. When enabled:

• Dogs can't be booked into daycare services until their assessment status is Passed (or Not Required). Any other status blocks the booking — WagDay fails closed, so an unknown or incomplete status won't slip through.
• The gate applies to daycare only. Other service categories aren't affected.
• The pet's profile says so plainly: "This dog requires a behaviour assessment before daycare bookings."

If you don't see the Behaviour Assessment card on a dog's Incidents tab, assessments aren't enabled for your organisation.

Setting up behaviour triggers

Triggers are the criteria your staff score during an assessment — things like "Aggression" or "Guarding", grouped under categories such as "Socialisation". Only Admins can manage them, at Dashboard → Assessments:

1. Go to Dashboard → Assessments (Assessment Settings).
2. Click Add Trigger and give it a name, plus an optional description ("what to look for…") and category.
3. Use the Active switch to retire a trigger without losing it, or the pencil and trash icons to edit and delete.

Two things worth knowing: only active triggers appear on new assessments, and deleting a trigger that has already been used in assessments deactivates it instead — your historical scores are preserved.

Running an assessment

Any staff member assessing a new dog starts from the pet's profile:

1. Open the dog's profile and go to the Incidents tab.
2. On the Behaviour Assessment card, click Start Assessment. (If no triggers are configured, you'll get a simple pass/fail form instead.)
3. Score each trigger from 1 to 5 — 1 Excellent, 2 Good, 3 Fair, 4 Concerning, 5 Critical — with optional notes per trigger.
4. Add overall notes about the dog's behaviour and submit.

How the result is calculated

WagDay averages the trigger scores and maps the result to a risk level:

• Average up to 2 → Low
• Average up to 3 → Medium
• Average up to 4 → High
• Above 4 → Critical

Low and Medium pass; High and Critical fail. The dog's assessment status updates to Passed or Failed accordingly, and its temperament flag is set automatically from the same result — Low becomes green, Medium becomes orange, and High or Critical becomes red. One assessment keeps the booking gate and the handling flag in step.

Where the latest assessment shows

The most recent completed assessment sits on the pet profile's Incidents tab, on the Behaviour Assessment card: the status badge and risk level, the overall score out of 5, who assessed the dog and when, every trigger's individual score, and the assessor's notes. That's the record staff check before accepting the next daycare booking.

Related

• Temperament flags (traffic light system) — the flag an assessment sets automatically.
• Vaccination tracking and policies — the other gate a new dog must clear before booking.
• Friends and enemies: pet compatibility — record who a newly assessed dog should (and shouldn't) share a space with.