From decorative to lifesaving, here’s a list of five free pet apps that we have tried and recommend for other animal lovers:

1) If you’re looking for a screensaver that will make you smile, Neon Animals Wallpaper Moving Animals probably fits the bill. The app offers a cat, a lion, a hummingbird and more in glowing neon on a dark background.

Pros: Nice, neon graphics that light up your phone and are fun to look at.

Cons: Expect ads.

2) Probably one of the coolest ideas for an app ever! Dog Scanner lets you take a picture of any dog whose breed you don’t recognize and helps figure it out for you. It then gives you a pie chart showing how much of a certain breed a dog likely is.

This girl (below), who is one of our pets, was identified as having a 75 percent likelihood of being an American Pit Bull Terrier (we figured as much).

The app also gives a description of the primary breed and a link to more info about that breed on Wikipedia.

The second dog we attempted to ID through the app was also one of our dogs, a beagle mix named Lilly.

For the first picture, the app identified her as 36.5 percent likely a Schweizerischer Niederlaufhund, a breed we had never even heard of but one which did have some striking similarities to her appearance. We then uploaded a pic of Lilly from a different angle, and she was identified as possibly being a Maltese, which we doubt we could pass her off as to any real-life Maltese experts, even from a good distance as she is short haired and dark in color.

Pros: Both practical and fun-to-experiment with applications.

Cons: More of a helpful suggestion-type app for getting clues as to type of dog than a definitive breed identifier.

3) APPC by ASPCA: My pet ate what? Yeah, we’ve all been there. And Google searches aren’t always that helpful when you are sifting through all kinds of results frantically trying to find out whether what Rover swallowed was toxic, slightly aggravating to his belly or not problematic whatsoever.

The app provides a database of plants, hazards, foods, medications, and other materials that are toxic to your dog along with a calculator to determine the severity of the poisoning based on the size of your dog. Or cat, horse, and bird.

Pros: Great idea and a good resource to keep pets safe.

Cons: User reviews site a somewhat limited list of things animals might ingest. (The app is described as “not meant to be all-inclusive, but rather a compilation of the most frequently encountered toxins.”)

4) Rundogo: The app can be used in a variety of ways, one of which is to keep track of how much exercise your doggy is getting. The app can also be used to track human exercise. So, if you or Fido has been putting on some pounds lately, this might be a good way to get motivated to start going on regular walks, and then an overview of progress.

Starts out free; the paid upgrade is $9.99)

Pros: Well-rated as easy to navigate by users.

Cons: Expect ads with the free version.

5) Weather puppy: Forecast + Dogs: There are a lot of ways to get the weather online, but we recommend this app, which brings you the weather along with lovely photos of puppies, so that, even when the weather is gloomy, you still have to smile a little.

Starts out free; can purchase additional puppies and themes, which will remove the ads.

Pros: Users describe this app as having accurate, localized and easy-to-read weather information. Lets you easily share your local weather/dog pic on social media.

Cons: We’d love to see some animation with the dogs since there are only still images.