Fed the Dog Support

Last updated: 11 September 2026

Two phones, one dog, one question. At breakfast and dinner both phones ask whether she has been fed. Either person answers and it is settled for both. It is called Fed the Dog, on the Home Screen and everywhere else.

Report a problem

Email me at alex@alexecollins.com.

Say what you did, what happened, and what you expected instead. These help:

• the iPhone and the version of iOS on it, for both phones if the problem is between them
• the version of the app from the App Store listing
• what Settings says about the sharing, on both phones
• for a meal that came out wrong, which meal it was and roughly what time each of you answered
• for anything spoken, what you said and what the checklist ended up saying

What to expect

I write these apps on my own, in my own time, so this is not a support desk. I read everything that comes in. A reply usually takes a few days, and a fix takes longer than a reply.

Things that are working as intended

• It says “Nobody has said”, not “Not fed”. The app only knows what a person told it. Nobody answering is not the same as the dog going hungry, and the app will not claim otherwise.
• One yes settles the meal. It never asks the other person to agree, never shows a meal as half fed, and never asks you to confirm. If both of you have to act, the app has failed at the only thing it does.
• The checklist is read, not ticked. A meal can be four things and feeding her is still one answer. The list is there so the person who does not normally do breakfast can do breakfast.
• It stops asking after the third time. Three asks a meal is the ceiling, and it never asks about breakfast once dinner is due.
• There is no score. Not who fed her more this week, not a streak, not a chart. A scoreboard between two people who live together is a bad idea dressed up as a feature.
• The history stops at a week. Long enough to settle the argument about Saturday. Longer than that and it becomes a record of each other.
• It never asks for the camera. Speaking is the whole setup and it takes about twenty seconds. A photograph of the food bag buys nothing.
• One dog. Hers is the only bowl.

If the two phones are not agreeing

Settings says in a sentence where the record is and who can see it: in your iCloud with nobody else on it, an invite out and nobody having taken it up, or shared, with the other person named. Read that on both phones first.

• Both of you need to be signed in to iCloud, with iCloud Drive on.
• The person who set the app up sends the invitation. The other person accepts it once, from Messages or Mail, and that is the whole of the pairing.
• Answering with no signal still works. It is written on the phone, shown on the phone, and goes up when there is a signal. The screen says when the other phone has not seen it yet.
• An answer can take a moment to cross. The asks are made by each phone on its own, so they arrive on time regardless.

If the asks stop arriving

Check Settings, then Notifications, then Fed the Dog. The app says so itself at the top of its own Settings when notifications are off, because an app that cannot ask is not doing anything. The times come from the diet, so changing a meal’s time on either phone moves the ask on both.

Changing what she eats

Say it again. The diet is a standing setting rather than something described at the bowl, and either phone can change it. If you both change it, the later change wins, which is the right answer for a setting and would be the wrong one for a feeding.

Privacy

This is the one app of mine that genuinely syncs. The record lives in one of your two iCloud accounts and is shared with the other person, and nothing goes to me. What is in it, whose iCloud it is, and what the other person can see are all on the privacy page.