Oct 17, 2014 Better with Pets 2014
Last year, Imprint’s founder, Julia Huang, spoke about our Architecture for Dogs project at the first Purina Better with Pets conference in New York City. You can revisit our posts about that event here and here. I was lucky enough to attend this year’s Better with Pets summit earlier this week, at the impressive Skylight Modern in Chelsea. Much like last year’s event, it was a fascinating line-up of primarily dog and cat experts of all stripes, with some entertaining interludes for very good measure.
The speakers included 14-year-old inventor Brooke Martin, creator of IC Pooch; the founders of Minneapolis-based Cat Vid Fest; TV host Victoria Stilwell, who champions positive training; and several noteworthy veterinarians and psychologists. The performances included hip-hop from youth program B.E.A.T. NYC, a clever spoken word poem about pets as poets by the Mayhem Poets trio, and live piano accompaniment to the talk from the founders of music therapy for dogs, Through a Dogs Ear. There were also some short video screenings such as Henri Le Chat Noir (scroll down for this, seriously) and an powerful film about pets and PTSD from Purina.
In this midst of all this incredible content, I think my favorite must have been Mark Deadrick of 3Dyne who talked about 3D printing prosthetic limbs for dogs. Mark cleverly brought along his first and totally awesome patient, Turbo Roo, a tiny Chihuahua born with missing front legs who has been the recipient several evolutions of a cart for highly improved mobility at an amazingly affordable price. I’m not giving away any secrets here as Purina have promised the talks will all be available online in a few weeks. In the meantime, you can check out some of their initial coverage here.