Why DIG Labs started with poop ????

Why poop? We get this question all the time.

We started with dog poop images because they are a powerful way to translate pet health insights into pet parent actions and caregiving decisions. After dealing with a DECADE (!!!) of one of my dogs, Sammy’s, digestive issues, I was willing to try anything to help make her feel comfortable.

I discovered that just by looking closely at my dog’s stool, I was better able to understand what was going on with Sammy’s internal health and digestion. Think about it:

Poop is a daily window into your dog's overall health and wellbeing. What goes in is just as important as what comes out.?

Now let’s get down and dirty ;)

Poop can show you 3 things:

1. It provides insights into optimal diet and nutrition, which is one of the best ways you can help your dog live a healthier and longer life.
2. By monitoring and tracking your dog’s poop, you can often avoid medical emergencies. There are often warnings and clues that your dog’s body is trying to give to you since your pet can’t use their voice. It’s our job as their caretakers to pay attention to these clues, and intervene before there’s an emergency.
3. The digestive system is often thought of as the hub of other physiological or mental issues with our dogs. Skin or coat issues and flare-ups, or even behavioral issues serve as indicators that potentially tie into what’s happening in their digestive system. From the human perspective, think about how stomach aches can affect your mood. By using your dog’s poop as a daily health barometer, we’re able to be better caregivers to our pets.

So, what can we do with these insights?

By simply taking a photo, we can see whether we should keep monitoring our pet, or decide it’s time to go to the vet. Observations like diarrhea, potential parasite infections, and bloody stools can all be detected by a photo and looking closer at your dog’s stool. Through these tools, pet parents are also able to take a more holistic or longitudinal approach to their dog’s health. Typically, there are subtle clues that appear over time, indicating something is wrong with your pet, but they don’t occur all at once. By tracking your dog’s stool, you can pick up on broader issues like IBS, pancreatitis, and other longer term ailments, allowing you to be more proactive when it comes to treatment.

Armed with this knowledge, you’ll also be able to help your vet at your wellness visit by providing them with more information to help them help your dog by being their daily eyes on the ground.

Lastly, as dog parents, we have endless questions about dog food, mainly, what’s the best option? Luckily, you can get clues from their poop. You shouldn't pick based on what they seem to enjoy eating, or what happens to be the most convenient for you to buy, rather, how the food is nourishing and enhancing your dog’s body.?

DIG Labs (now part of Ollie) makes it easier to receive these insights - first with our proprietary image analysis approach that can be applied on extremely small data sets, and at scale, using patent-pending computer vision models that analyze images to derive health insights, in real time, at home, at the tap of a button – starting with stool.

Try DIG Labs Health Check for yourself, and let us know what you think! It's thanks to the feedback from pet parents like you that we've been able to help tens of thousands of times over.?Or reach out to chat about how this type of approach can help you supercharge engagement with your brand's community.