Or... just one more conference! Healthy Pet Connect was born in the middle of the Covid pandemic and was based on 2 research projects Dr Hadar & I had done together staring in 2019 right after we met at VIS. Just 2 years later on July 3rd, 2021 we had a great MVP (a nutritional focused platform) and a real company! Spudgie, an amazing 37# a rescue cat just happened to appear just in time to test & tweak our platform for the next 2 years! 2022 was a blur of startup circles and learning about what our colleagues really needed in the areas of weight management, chronic care & home health device data in terms of telemonitoring. Then came 2023! Many of you know my life as a startup CEO, a member of the TVC, AAFP and AAVN boards and an AAHA clinic medical director takes me to lots of conferences. Many times I am able to work across tables in very fun and innovative ways to help our colleagues, my startup & my own clinic, often at the same time! Here is how 2023 rolled out for HPC… January started out the year way fun. I drove the new HPC van to Orlando to VMX. It was crazy fun especially having the fully finished HPC van on the floor and all our tech friends (Digitail, Talkatoo, Petsapp, Pet Desk, Woof Dr, TVC etc) to celebrate and hang out with was simply amazing! Dr Barr and I enjoyed a couple days on the beach near Naples after. (PM me if you want to join us (popup style) this year! February WVC was full of great meetings and drinks with some brilliant minds (Matt Russell, Shawn Wilke, Sebastian Gabor, & Nick McCart) to name just a few. It truly helped Dr Hadar & I find “our voice” amidst that challenge between startup & a “real company” that starts to generate revenue & attract angel funding and redefine our ownership structure. On my clinic homefront, my clinic team was onboarding Digital after 36 years with Impromed! The Digitail team did an amazing job and we love their PIMS and their team! In March We attended the student AVMA conference in Illinois and were blown away by how well they liked our concept (and free scales :) We sent home over 20 body weight scales and 25 food scales to very happy future veterinarians. Being randomly placed next to the AAVN booth made the show even more special with Ryan & Martha Cline in attendance. April This is always the month after all the big veterinary meetings where we sift through what we are seeing our profession needs and it hit us that hard we needed to focus on all chronic care and preventive care not just obesity. May Out of nowhere just as our Spudgie reached his ideal weight of 12# up pops Patches a whopping 42# cat in Maryland who needed our platform. We donated a scale and at last check has lost over 10#. He has an amazing 43K followers we hope to enlist on our new platform. June AAVN/ACVIM is always one of my favorite conferences for sure. I rotated off as co-chair of their student committee and enjoyed sharing clinical cases and news of our platform with them. Most of the committee are serious foodies (especially Marth Cline) and I will seriously miss those dinners! See you in MPLS next summer! July last minute trip to AVMA in Denver was well worth it. Good TVC meetings, a robust young group of attendees and great social events! Nick and I always have fun! August turned out to be the only one of 2 months with no conference all year. August was dark indeed for me personally as my adventure kitten Roo (Bug’s mentee) disappeared on Aug 3rd (happy ending see Dec) September My first Vet Forum meeting in Texas supporting TVC with Nick McCart. Lots of fun spent with Ryan Leech, Nis and so many other fun people. Fascinating sitting on the “other side of the table” representing 4000 independent vet clinics. The month ended horribly losing HPC’s beloved angel investor Dr Elizabeth Colleran. We will always move forward in her name and her wishes for improving cats' lives. (and dogs, as she loved them too as does HPC) October Veterinary Innovation Summit never disappoints. Kansas City is always gritty and fun. Always get to spend time with some of my favorite DVMS & industry reps. Straight to Memphis (even grittier!) for the AAFP where we sold 20 scales. We now have over 100 in the hands of practicing veterinarians, veterinary students, researchers and pet parents. Great meeting Emmet & Rory and enjoying some awesome BBQ and beers in between career stories. November Vetsource tour with the TVC board was very interesting. I gave some endodontic training to 5 colleagues and delivered some scales to get started with HPC. Bob Merrill is an old windsurfing & sailing buddy, has an amazing practice and Portland is always a great visit. December My year was made whole again with Roo’s reappearance at a neighbors less than 1 mile away. 120 days dodging coyotes, owls, and who knows what else!. She is only 7 # but wiley beyond any cat I have ever met. I learned a lot. She is finally regaining trust of humans and her former housemate cats have now fully re-accepted her but it took a full month! Buy me a beer at our next conference and I can tell you more ;) As a direct result of that experience HPC is devoting a chunk of its marketplace to pet recovery technology One last conference! Kisaco Veterinary Innovation In LA didn't disappoint! Originally called Pets & Money I last attended over 5 years ago in Austin Texas. Kisaco has not turned this into an amazing consumer focused conference. Never heard of Bistrocat, Sphinx, Moggie, Maven? Check out/follow our marketplace! Amazing pitches! Glad we started years ago!! Brutal talent! My last HPC trip of the year was to visit Dr Michelle Meyer and the wonderful team at Serenity Animal Hospital with an amazing caring culture. As we close out 2023 and look to 2024 Most importantly in the last month HPC redrew its structure bringing in 2 new equity partners. Please meet Dr Joey Goldthorpe, our chronic care lead with over 18 years experience challenging feline cases (including dozens of her personal cats) and Joe Muller, an incredible full stack developer who has completely rebuilt our platform. His previous experience working at epic software working with data visualization in a medical setting and using wearables fits HPC to a "T" with our future goals. We couldn't be happier and nothing will be impossible with these two talented individuals joining my partner Dr Hadar and our already amazing veterinary centered advisory board link to board. We are by the way very interested in angel funding. (Our total raise for the next 2 years is 200K) If you know anyone please send them our way. We prefer to keep our funding DVM primarily and with those who share our passions. Our sincere thanks for any leads! We will roll out our new platform with all its features starting next week but want to thank each of you who we zoomed in with, shared your perspectives or in many other ways showed your support for HPC in 2023 and before.
We are ever inspired by those we meet at conferences and in our clinic visits. We promise to stay true to vet med while saving you time, improving outcomes and maybe just adding just a little bit of fun or joy to your lives if we are really fortunate! We wish you much success & happiness in 2024! Drs Ken, Barr, Joey & developer Joe! ....and the entire HPC team
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BON APPETIT with our feline family members!
How Can We Provide a 5-star Dining Experience for our Feline Family Members? How? What? How much? When? Where? Every cat is different so there is no one “right answer” or solution, but following are some guidelines we can use as a starting point. Our goal is to feed our cats in a way that ensures they have the most natural, stress-free and healthy dining experience. How we feed our cats is in direct contrast to their natural feeding behaviors: We often provide unlimited amounts of very palatable food which they don’t need to “work for” in one lump sum and in close proximity to other family members, be it cat/dog/humans. This can lead to weight and behavioral issues as well as causing stress and other health issues for our cats. What you feed should be determined by a cat’s life stage, their dietary preferences, and recommendations by their health care team depending on their weight goals and other medical conditions. Cats have a reputation of being particular or finicky eaters. Feeding a kitten or young cat a variety of food flavors, ingredients and textures (as long as this doesn’t upset their GI tract) can help them be more flexible to different diets as they age. There is much debate about whether dry or canned food is better… again, there is no one right answer. There are benefits and reasons to feed each, and what you decide will depend on many factors depending on your cat’s preference and health status, your vet’s recommendations and other parameters. Many people elect to feed a combination of both dry and canned food as a lot of cats seem to like the variety. How much to feed should be how much your cat needs to maintain an ideal healthy weight. The amount can vary greatly depending on a cat’s metabolism, lifestage, activity level, and medical conditions. A starting point for calorie amount to feed can be recommended by your veterinarian and adjusted accordingly as needed based on your cat’s body condition and weight. This is best monitored by weighing your cat regularly (once weekly to monthly is recommended) at home on an accurate cat-friendly body weight scale. (NOTE: The amount to be fed recommended on the package by many commercially available foods is very often times significantly more than what a cat’s requirements truly are). When to feed especially frequency is another important consideration. In the wild, cats must hunt to obtain food and will eat multiple small meals throughout the day. Multiple sources report that cats in the wild will eat 8-12 times daily. How can we emulate this at home? If you work from home or have a flexible schedule, you can offer many small meals throughout the day. This is not realistic for many of us, so automated feeders can be used to feed multiple meals daily. There are many models available, including microchip activated, bluetooth connected, and even some emerging canned food models (Bistrocat & Sphinx) Many of us enjoy the act of feeding our cats, so since using an automated feeder eliminates that, options are to feed kibble in the automated feeder but then manually feed a canned meal daily and/or can also provide treat options to allow for the bonding experience of feeding. To stimulate the hunting behaviors that are such an integral part of a cat’s behavior, you can hide small food portions around the house and/or use food puzzles that cats must ‘work’ to obtain food from. These are great solutions and there are a myriad of products and also homemade versions that work well. These options can potentially be problematic if you have multiple cats, or dogs, or toddlers in the house that may eat food not intended for them, so may need to find other ways to stimulate hunting behaviors. Where should we feed our cats? It is a common misconception that cats are not social animals. However, they are generally NOT social eaters and prefer to eat on their own (of course there are exceptions to this). Cats in the wild almost always eat at a table for one. Ideally, if you have a multiple cat household, each should have a separate feeding station. This doesn’t mean they need to eat in separate rooms, but each should have their own bowl/plate, and should be at least visually separated, such as on opposite sides of the kitchen island or up on their own cat tree perches. It may be necessary to feed cats in different rooms depending on their eating habits. To complicate things, the majority of cat loving households have two or more cats. Just like people, they all have different eating habits, health issues and personalities. This can necessitate flexibility and creative measures to provide a five star meal. Let me give an example of two cats I have that couldn’t be more different: Petunia is a petite dainty girl with a somewhat particular food preference. She will literally eat 2-3 kibbles at a time many times throughout the day. Given unlimited access to food she has maintained an ideal lean weight throughout her entire 15 years. All was well and good until I adopted a hungry underweight stray cat who I named Mumford. He would eat any food at any time in large quantities. Initially, he needed extra calories so that was okay. But once he was healthy and had gained weight, this wasn’t appropriate. Many times cats who were strays and/or in a shelter setting will eat as if they are starving even when they no longer are, This can lead to begging, overeating (if calories not regulated), and a common behavior known as ‘scarf and barf’ (eating too much too quickly and so it comes right back up). Obviously the same feeding regime does not work for both of these cats. For Petunia, a good option would be a microchip activated feeder that only allows her access. I can put her entire rations for the day in her feeder and she can eat her multiple small meals as desired. This would not work for Mumford, as if I put his entire daily amount in the feeder he would eat it all at once. So for him, an automated feeder that released measured portions every 4-6 hours would be more appropriate. I also put their feeders in separate areas close to their household territories so they (especially Petunia) can eat in peace without feeling crowded. When it’s time for their canned food meal, I feed Mumford in a separate room because otherwise he gobbles his down and then tries to barge in on Petunia. He learned very quickly that this was the routine and so as soon as I start preparing for ‘tuna time’ (this is what we called canned food dinner at my house) he would literally run into his room and jump up on his dining platform (cat tree) in anticipation. With a little trial and error and creative serving we can all find the right restaurant style for our own cat(s). So, while of course we want to feed a nutritionally balanced and quality diet – how, what, when and where we feed this diet are just as important as what we feed. Our goal is to create a natural, healthy and enjoyable dining experience for our feline family members. Please pass the mouse souffle’ with a side of tuna tartar! Dr Joey (with advice from Mumford, Petunia and the other 60 (yes 6-0) special needs cats she has shared her home with!) |
AuthorSKen is CEO and co-founder of Healthy Pet Connect Archives
January 2025
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