If I opened a shop, I know exactly what I would sell. The concept came to me when Lilly was diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney disease in 2020. After she passed, I devised a diet monitor. I worked with a product development company, Davidson, to get this product in the stores.
My idea was simple. The food bowl would attach to a scale with a chip reader. When the kitty approaches the bowl to eat, the feeder records the ending weight of the food. The data would be stored on the cloud and accessed through a phone app. Over time, you can see how much each pet was eating or drinking. The app gives pet parents a trend so they know something is wrong long before it is noticable.
I researched several companies and Davidson seemed like the best one. I don’t know how to make cad drawings or get a patent. I don’t have contacts with manufacturers or warehouses to go into production. They had all that and I thought the cost was affordable.
Unfortunately, we went from kitties to puppies and the final design wasn’t a clean simple easy to use feeder. They wanted more money to make the presentation “snazzy” to the companies they were selling to. I said no. After they exhausted these companies, the idea was shelved.
If I won the lottery, I’d revist this idea again. I would include other products that I’ve thought about that can help both cats and dogs lead longer, healtheir lives. The goal is to enhance commonly used products by fur parents. For example, waste bags that react with the chemical composition of the waste. These bags can alert the fur parent about a change in their fur baby’s health. Fur brushes that can sense the composition of fur, which can also alert a fur parent to a change.
A pet diet monitor—that’s a neat idea, especially when the data is transmitted to an app. That takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation.
Thanks. Hopefully, I’ll get the funds to produce it independently.