New weather service delivers forecasts at dog’s eye level to prevent burned paws
A dog lover and entrepreneur has created a weather service tailored specifically to dogs. It broadcasts tens of thousands of reports to users every month with the weather at the level of a dog’s head and paws. It also includes temperature readings for asphalt, grass and concrete, and variations based on breeds, body size and coat length.
“This past weekend I stood outside a pet conference in Fort Worth, pointing an infrared thermometer at the asphalt. It read 131°F. The air was 98°F,” Clay Bartlett said, noting that the 33-degree gap could easily result in burned paws even over a short distance.”That’s why our team of veterinarians, nurses, and dog trainers created Pawcast by Weather.
pet — because the temperature that our dogs feel can be wildly different from the way that you or I feel temperature,” he said.
From late-September through October, Pawcast delivered 28,000 alerts to more than 2,000 pet parents across all 50 states and DC. Each alert gives a straight temperature reading, as well as “Dog Feel°.”
Bartlett and his veterinary team previously spent eight years building TeleTails, a veterinary telehealth platform providing care for 1.5 million pet parents.”Over the last year, our co-founder and Chief Veterinary Officer, Dr. Hilary Jones, noticed an increase in pet safety questions related to the weather,” Bartlett said.
“We realized there was a massive information gap, with most veterinary literature on the topic reverting to a stale grid from 1998.”He said the team took thousands of surface temperature readings across the country over the last year — asphalt, concrete and grass, in cities, suburbs and rural areas.
Those readings became the foundation for our model of how heat and cold reach a dog at ground level. Together, we’ve produced a dog-focused temperature reading that accounts for each dog’s breed, coat, age, and weight: our Dog Feel°, and route-specific estimates for the walk itself. The service is available via app on the App Store and Google Play Store, and at Weather.
