Animal welfare project

Hello to everybody who decides to read this post. Thank you for your time and hopefully by the end of this story you will find a reason to back this project I'm doing.

It’s rather straightforward and I will explain it in the following text. I’m heading a project that aims to improve the quality of life of animals. In this inception phase, it’s mostly catered to common pets like dogs and cats but in the future, we would look to extend our innovations further to improve the welfare of animals in general.

The idea for our project came from me after quite a horrific experience at the vet which left my cat completely traumatized for a good week. Each of the next visits was terrible simply because his first one was a terrible experience. He was admitted for regular checkups that included an ECG and that is where it went badly. My cat was a stray one adopted at around age 1 from me and my family. Like a stray cat, he is obviously quite shy towards touching and foreigners in general. I feel he does not entirely trust us either yet despite being with us for two years. He will quite often flinch when you touch him only to relax after he confirmed your intentions are not to harm him.

So you can imagine how some checkups at the vet proved rather problematic for him. They had to put him to sleep to do the test properly and they came back normal which I was happy about. I was rather suspicious though of the measuring as a biologist I’m fully aware of what putting an animal to sleep does to the heart rhythm and respiratory rate so it got me thinking about better and possible solutions to those tests in general that first of all make it easier for animals especially those who are very sensitive to touch and second of all because of the accuracy which might get skewed if you put the animal to sleep. I’m quite certain it does.

Fast forward a few months, with the help of friends, I came up with a solution to the problem which includes a physical sensor that does the deed without causing any distress to the animal. We used our University to test out the theory in an experiment and it proved successful. Obviously, like anything, it needs a bit of fine-tuning to make it work the way we intend it to work but so far its accuracy is over 95 %. The method does the deed without disturbing the animal and it requires only a few moments of stillness. Theoretically, it could be performed in a vet’s office or even at home which would make it even simpler and better for owners. They can simply transfer the data over to their vet without any fuss.

The readings would be made in an environment where the animal is comfortable resulting in accurate readings of vital signs that might indicate if something is wrong. So why I am doing this. Well as with any project we are severely lacking funds to optimize it better and hopefully improve the lives of animals going forward. We applied for funding in our country and got rejected (shocker I know) with the explanation that the research is not an essential one. Well, I disagree especially after witnessing what I witnessed almost a year ago at the vet. So essentially we are looking for help. If you love animals, if you want to see them live a more stress-free life and if you would like to see a better alternative for vital signs monitoring help us achieve it.

P.S. All funds used in the project will be transparently disclosed to avoid any misconception about the intentions of the project.