This is a submission for Weekend Challenge: Dog Days Edition

What I Built

I built PawPrints, a dog-first social community connected to PawPark, a dog-aware adventure planner.

The idea came from a problem I think many dog parents experience.

Life is busy. Sometimes maintaining our own social life is difficult, and finding a social life for our dogs can be even harder.

As dog parents, we are constantly trying to figure things out:

• Where can I take my dog to meet other dogs?
• Which places are genuinely dog-friendly?
• Where can my dog stay for a weekend or vacation?
• What have other dog parents already tried and trusted?
• Is a particular trail actually suitable for my dog today?

We have Instagram, Facebook, Google, and many other sources, but dog-related information is mixed together with everything else.

I wanted to imagine a community focused specifically around the life of a dog — where useful knowledge comes from other dog parents, trusted Paw Friends, and experiences their dogs have already had.

That became PawPrints.

💜 PawPrints

PawPrints is the social side of the experience.

The human owns the account, but every dog has their own Paw profile.

Dogs can:

• build their own profile and bio
• share photos, videos, memories, and adventures
• make Paw Friends
• react with Paws
• comment with Barks
• discover new dogs by name or breed
• search an existing Paw Friend list
• invite other dogs through Paw Together
• receive community notifications and milestone encouragement

Paw Together is designed to help online relationships become real-world relationships.

Dogs can post invitations for:

• 🐕 Looking for a Play Buddy
• 🌲 Let's Adventure
• 💤 Looking for a Sleepover
• 🏡 Happy to Host

Instead of swipe-style matching, I created Sniff.

A Sniff simply means:

"I'm interested."

It starts a conversation without creating a commitment. The owner can look at the other dog's profile first and then Wag Back or decline.

Privacy mattered to me too

Profiles can be:

• 🌎 Everyone
• 💜 Paw Friends
• 🔒 Only Me

Guest users are view-only and can only browse public profiles.

The demo community intentionally contains a mixture of public and Paw-Friends-only profiles so these privacy flows can be explored.

🌲 PawPark

While building the social side, another problem became important:

Not every dog-friendly trail is suitable for every dog.

A trail that works well for a young Labrador may not work for an older dog, a short-legged dog, a dog with mobility limitations, or a breed that struggles in hot weather.

PawPark therefore starts with location.

The user can:

• 📍 use their current location
• enter a ZIP code

For this prototype, trail coverage demonstrates the Bay Area and San Diego. For example, entering 92126 brings up the San Diego trail set.

PawPark first finds relevant nearby trails and then evaluates them using information about the dog, including:

• age
• size
• energy
• coat and heat tolerance
• mobility
• water preference
• social comfort

It combines that with current weather information from Open-Meteo and trail characteristics such as:

• distance
• elevation
• surface
• shade
• water availability
• leash rules
• crowd conditions

So the question is not simply:

"Is this a dog-friendly trail?"

It becomes:

"Is this nearby trail a reasonable choice for this particular dog, in these conditions, today?"

Completed adventures can become part of a dog's PawPassport and then flow back into PawPrints as memories.

The overall journey is:

Discover → Connect → Plan → Adventure → Share → Remember

🌈 In Memory

I also wanted to think about the complete life of a dog.

A dog can be marked In Memory 🌈 instead of simply being deleted.

That preserves their profile, photos, posts, memories, adventures, and PawPassport while pausing future Paw Together invitations and new PawPark planning.

Their PawPrints remain.

Demo

The project is deployed and can be explored directly in the browser.

👉 Live PawPrints demo:

[https://paw-prints-9nia1r7ez-rashmi17.vercel.app/]

A few things to try:

1. Enter PawPrints as a member.
2. Scroll PawFeed and watch Rosie's video play in the feed.
3. Tap a dog's profile picture to open their Paw profile.
4. Use Search to discover dogs and add Paw Friends.
5. Open Paw Together and inspect an invitation.
6. Sniff an invitation and explore the dog who posted it.
7. Switch into PawPark.
8. Use your location or enter 92126.
9. Choose a dog, day, and time and generate nearby trail recommendations.
10. Explore PawPassport and the adventure-to-memory flow.

No video recording is required to use the prototype — the deployed application itself is the interactive demo.

Code

The source code is available on GitHub:

Repository:

https://github.com/RashmiShivakumar/PawPrints

How I Built It

PawPrints is built with:

• React
• Vite
• Open-Meteo for weather data
• browser/local persistence for prototype state
• responsive CSS and SVG-based UI elements
• embedded demo media for reliable playback

One of the more interesting parts of building PawPrints was that the features are not independent screens.

I tried to make information move through the product.

A dog discovered in Search can become a Paw Friend.

A Paw Friend can create a Paw Together invitation.

That invitation can lead to a PawPark adventure.

A completed PawPark adventure can become a PawPassport achievement and a PawPrints memory.

I also built different behavioral rules depending on context.

For example:

• guests cannot Paw, Bark, post, or add friends
• Paw-Friends-only profiles stay hidden from guests
• In Memory profiles keep their history but cannot create new invitations
• multi-dog households can plan an outing together, with the more limited dog setting the practical ceiling
• location determines which trail set is evaluated before dog suitability and weather ranking are applied

What is prototype behavior?

PawPrints is deliberately a working product prototype rather than a production social network.

The current version uses seeded community activity and browser persistence to demonstrate the complete experience without requiring a backend.

A production version would move several things server-side, including:

• authentication
• multi-user social relationships
• privacy enforcement
• real-time notifications
• messaging
• user photo/video storage
• moderation and reporting
• secure AI integrations
• broader trail/location data

AI-assisted development

I'm not a developer by profession.

I approached PawPrints as a product builder: I defined the problem, designed the experience, tested the flows, made the product decisions, and used ChatGPT and Claude as development collaborators to turn the idea into a working React prototype.

AI helped me translate product thinking into implementation, but the process involved a lot of iteration: deciding what belonged in the product, testing the experience, finding broken flows, changing the privacy model, simplifying features, and repeatedly refining how PawPrints and PawPark should connect.

Where PawPrints Could Go Next

What I built this weekend is the beginning of the idea.

In the future, I can imagine PawPrints becoming a broader ecosystem around the whole life of a dog.

That could include:

• trusted dog food and everyday-care information
• dog-friendly travel and stay information
• connections with veterinary professionals
• integrations with GPS trackers and activity monitors
• health and activity trends, shared with owner permission
• a separate professional experience for veterinarians to review relevant information and provide routine guidance

The goal would not be to replace veterinary care or diagnose dogs through an app.

The larger idea is to create a connected community around dogs — where dog parents learn from each other, dogs find friendships and safer adventures, and professionals can contribute where their expertise is useful.

PawPrints today is the beginning of that ecosystem.

💜 PawPrints — Connect. Share. Trust.

🌲 PawPark — Explore. Adventure. Together.

Helping dogs and their humans connect, adventure, help each other, and leave a lifetime of paw prints behind.