DataTalks.Club Building Pet Health Tech: ML, Sensors, and Dog Behavior Data
7 snips
Dec 12, 2025 Sofya Yulpatova, founder and CEO of FitTails, dives into her innovative pet-tech startup that merges machine learning with canine behavior analysis. She shares her journey from a coding enthusiast to creating a health monitor for dogs that detects anomalies in behavior and sleep. Sofya discusses her insights on pet wearables, noting gaps in current trackers. She also highlights the importance of establishing individual health baselines through extensive data collection, and the challenges of bootstrapping a hardware startup while emphasizing community collaboration.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Adopting The Puppy That Sparked FitTails
- Sofya adopted a labrador puppy impulsively after finding a listing late at night and driving 1.5 hours to see the litter.
- The puppy later revealed inherited hyperkeratosis that the breeder had not disclosed, sparking Sofya's pet-health focus.
Basic Trackers Miss Deep Behavioral Signals
- Off-the-shelf pet trackers report simple engagement metrics but rarely explore deeper behavioral signals.
- Detecting early health problems demands long-term datasets and exploration of sleep, movement quality, and subtle variability.
Health As Anomaly, Not One-Off Labels
- Health issues in dogs often appear as subtle temporal changes rather than single labeled activities.
- Sofya frames detection as anomaly detection that needs a personalized baseline per dog before flagging deviations.