Pet Tech: How to Tell What’s Actually Worth It

Pet tech is exploding, and a lot of it looks amazing right up until you’re the one charging it, cleaning it, troubleshooting it, and regretting the money you spent. 

In this episode, AI and tech expert Debbie Richards breaks down the simplest way to decide if a pet gadget is actually worth it for your home, your budget, and your pet’s personality. We talk about the core questions to ask before you buy, what “set it and forget it” should really mean, and why the best tech is the kind that reduces stress instead of creating more. You’ll also hear a few standout trends from CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, including preventative health tools, safer pet doors, and a smart fountain designed to make cleaning less of a part-time job.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:

• The decision filters that keep you from buying tech that becomes another chore
• How to spot when a gadget solves a real problem vs creating a new one
• What to check before you buy, so returns and subscriptions don’t surprise you

CONNECT WITH DEBBIE
 Website: https://cre8iveii.com/

OTHER LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Facial recognition cat feeder: https://cheerble.com/

Rescue Retriever and the Rescue Retriever FireTag: https://rescueretriever.com

Petkit Water Fountain: https://petkit.com

Satellai Health and GPS Collar: https://satellai.com

Pawport Dog Doors: https://pawport.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro and welcome
• 0:45 How This Episode Is Different From Product Reviews
• 3:45 The First Question to Ask Before Buying Any Pet Tech
• 4:50 When Technology Solves a Problem… and When It Creates One
• 6:10 Why Some Gadgets Fail Based on Your Household Setup
• 7:20 Pet Parent Guilt and “Keeping Up” With Tech
• 8:15 Smart Feeders, Facial Recognition, and Whisker Fatigue
• 10:30 Noise, Fear, and Why Some Pets Reject Automation
• 12:35 Reviews, Demos, and Seeing Tech in Action Before Buying
• 14:00 Maintenance Fatigue and When Simple Is Better
• 15:40 Rescue Retriever FireTag and Fire Safety Tech
• 17:15 PetKit Self-Cleaning Water Fountain
• 19:00 Health-Tracking Dog Collars and GPS Reality Checks
• 22:15 Microchips vs GPS and Common Pet Tech Confusion- Know What Tech Actually Does Before Buying
• 24:10 Smart Pet Doors and Home Security Concerns
• 26:55 Companion Tech, Cyber Pets, and Seniors
• 29:45 How to Decide What’s Truly Worth Your Money
• 31:25 Final Takeaways and Listener Call to Action

Transcript

Pet Tech: How to Tell What’s Actually Worth It

Host: Amy Castro | Guest: Debbie Richards

Transcript Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Timestamps are preserved where provided.

Veterinary Disclaimer:  This episode discusses general pet health, behavior, and technology tools, but it is not veterinary advice. Tech devices can miss issues, misread behavior, or create a false sense of security. If your pet seems unwell, is in pain, or is acting “off,” contact your veterinarian promptly.  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for veterinary advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your veterinarian or a qualified animal health professional about your pet’s specific needs. 

Product Disclaimer:  This episode may mention specific products or brands for context. These mentions are not endorsements or recommendations. Always do your own research and choose what fits your pet, your home, and your budget. 

Transcript

Amy Castro

If you've ever bought a pet gadget and realized it actually creates more work than it saved you, this episode is for you. We're talking about pet tech, but from a practical angle. What problem is it really solving? What it might actually make worse in your house? And how to know if it's worth the money before you buy.

Amy Castro (00:21.336)

You've reached the Pet Parent Hotline, your lifeline to practical solutions for your toughest pet parenting challenges. I'm your host Amy Castro, and I'm here to help you cut through the noise and turn expert advice into step-by-step strategies so you can stop chasing your tail and start enjoying life with pets again.

Amy Castro (00:45.72)

Welcome to the show. I'm Amy Castro, and today we're talking about pet tech, but we're not talking about product reviews, although I promise there is a mini product parade at the end of the episode.

Amy Castro

But really looking at the decision-making process, how do you decide what's actually worth it? And what's just gonna be another thing that you have to charge and clean? And what questions to ask before you spend the money? My guest, Debbie Richards, is a technology and AI expert, and she just got back from CES, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And so we're gonna use what she saw there as a real-world lens for how smart pet parents can choose technology that actually helps. Debbie, thank you for being on the show and welcome.

Debbie Richards

Yeah, I'm excited to be on this show. This is really different for me.

Debbie Richards

I know, I know. I was saying to Debbie in the quote unquote green room before that even though she and I communicate fairly regularly and we've been communicating fairly recently when I was thinking about tech, I had my brain so far into the pet area that I didn't make the connection between her and tech. So if you don't mind sharing Debbie a little bit about your background in tech and how you got here and how you ended up with CES.

Debbie Richards

happy to share. So I have a computer science degree. I was a robotics programmer out of college and then changed my career like other people do a number of times. Now I am a technology consultant. So I work with enterprise organizations to find solutions, whether they are technology gadgets or software or a methodology. I'm currently doing a lot of consulting around the AI space, as you can imagine.

Debbie Richards (02:27.116)

I'm also a pet owner. I've had dogs and cats. currently have one dog, Pablo, and our cat, Sushi, at home. So I'm always interested in what's going on, and that's why I follow you,

Amy Castro

Well, thank you. Yes, I know. And you're a great pet parent, and I love that we can kind of talk about both things together. So what I wanted to kind of start off talking about was what did you see when you were at CES? Was there a particular focus or a goal that they seemed to have or theme?

Debbie Richards

There were a couple of themes. So the first theme that I think is super important for pet owners is preventative health. there were a lot of technologies that revolved around that. CES this year was full of AI and robotics. But the other thing had to do with set it and forget it safety type things, which I thought were really interesting. And I've seen some of those in the past as well.

Debbie Richards

Yeah, that, I mean, obviously the easier we can make it because when it comes to technology, a lot of times it's the latest thing, the latest gadget, but is there something that people should be looking for or questions that people should be asking themselves before they just spend their money on something? Like one of the questions that I generally will ask myself is, is this going to make Amy Castro's life easier?

Debbie Richards

Yes, I agree. I have had older pets, so for me, pet health is very important. And some of the smart technology that's around to help us understand that, things that we can do to monitor our pets' health is so super important. I look at some of those things, but I look at it through the lens of any other technology. the first question I always look at is, what problem does this solve?

Amy Castro (04:17.342)

Is it something that is available today? And is it something that's really going to make a difference in the lives of my pet? And for me, that's important. know, as good pet owners, we have a little bit of disposable income, but sometimes we have to be a little careful about how we spend our money.

Amy Castro

Right. I think when it comes to problems, because there are people that will, just as an example, I have experimented with a couple of different types of automatic litter boxes. And on one hand, I think there's probably people out there that would say, that's ridiculous to spend umpty ump amount of money on scooping a litter box when you can just as easily lean over and do it yourself. so, you know,

Amy Castro

They would say, well, that's not really a problem. Amy Castro would say, when you're running an animal rescue and you've got 40 litter boxes to scoop, if I don't have to then come in the house and scoop another litter box or to do it multiple times a day because I've got multiple animals running around, it does solve a problem for me. But what I've also found sometimes with technology is that it creates a problem.

Amy Castro

So that's another question that I think comes into my head is like beyond the does it solve a problem? Does it create other problems? Am I willing to do the work to make that product keep working? The maintenance aspects, let's say. So are there other things we should be asking ourselves?

Debbie Richards

Yeah, you know, and sometimes it just doesn't work with our home situation. So for example, years ago, somebody gave me one of those automated snack feeder things and it also had a camera attached to it. It's still in the box. Okay. Because at the time they gave that to me, I had three dogs and there was no way that that was going to work in our house because we have one of our dogs was the dominant queen and she would get all the treats.

Debbie Richards (06:09.58)

You know, so I just said, thank you very much. And I'll probably, I might put it out for Pablo. I like the fact that it has a built-in webcam. So when he comes up to get the feed, I can see him and I could probably talk to him. but you know, that's just a quirky pet owner thing. But, but in that case, the present just didn't work out for me because of the situation at home. And it's the same thing for you, you know, for any kind of technology that we use, we're looking for ways to make our lives easier, to make them better.

Debbie Richards

You know, we spend money on all sorts of gadgets. We all have to have the latest smartphone. There's just some technology that we take for granted that even a few years ago, we didn't even think that that would be something we would need.

Amy Castro

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think you hit the nail on the head with the idea of really looking at your own individual pets and situations, because I could see in my house, if I had an automated treat dispenser, not only would probably one get all of the treats who doesn't need them, but it could literally trigger a pretty significant fight and somebody could get injured over trying to get at that treat. so...

Amy Castro

You know, it actually creates a problem for me instead of solving a problem. So that's a good point is to not just jump on the bandwagon because a friend has it or, you know, the other thing I think that sometimes we fall into with tech or any other pet gadgets is sort of a pet parent guilt. Like you're not a good enough pet parent if you don't have the latest and greatest in everything. Like we recently just got an automatic pet feeder because I have one cat who is underweight.

Amy Castro

and two that are overweight. And I kind of knew it might not work because the one that's underweight is afraid of her own shadow. And so we get this pet feeder. It seems like it's going to go well. And it does go well as long as I don't have the pet feeder plugged in. She'll eat out of it just fine as long as it doesn't actually move or operate because every single time, it doesn't matter if she saw it yesterday, the day before, the day before, it startles her and makes her run away.

Debbie Richards (08:16.118)

Yeah, that goes into, you don't mind, I'm going to share something that I saw that related to that. There was this one tech that was called the Face ID Feeder. And so what it does is it uses facial recognition and there's some programming that goes in the back end of that and some AI and it identifies the cat before opening up the bowl. Now, when it opened up that bowl, it was very soft.

Debbie Richards

You know, and it also, when it closed, it was very soft. And the bowl itself was very shallow and wide, which I thought was interesting because they specifically address something that is related to cats, whisker fatigue. And that's where the whiskers go against the bowl and stuff. And they said, you know, if you're a true cat lover, then you're going to appreciate that. And I had to think about it and I went, yeah. And then they even had an ice pack.

Debbie Richards

that you could put into a hidden compartment so that if you had to use wet foods, you could use it as well. So I thought that was pretty cool. It was very quiet. They didn't have any actual cats going up to it, but I could understand that. It might be something that people will be interested in if they want to go out and check on it. There's a website and they can find out information about that. But I thought that was fascinating.

Debbie Richards

Yeah, well, and you know, it's interesting because when I was shopping around for automatic feeders, remember you had mentioned to this to me before, you know, there's feeders that go off of collars and tags, there's feeders that go off of microchips. Now, you know, here this new technology with the facial recognition, and I thought one of the first sticking points on this feeder was going to be the collar and the tag. And I knew from my pet, it might not have been the best choice in comparison to the microchip one, but

Debbie Richards

the price tag was better. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna give it a whirl. Well, I was shocked that the cat had no problem with the collar. This cat has never had a collar on her life and she's 14 years old. My point being is that you really have to kind of think it through and sometimes it's just gonna end up being an experiment because again, I thought the sticking point was gonna be the collar, not the machine and what really freaks her out. Even though the feeder opens very slow and it is very wide.

Amy Castro (10:31.704)

but it is that motor, so she walks up to it, it's really quiet, and as soon as she gets close and it starts to make the noise, she jumps and runs away. And so, you know, maybe she'd get used to it eventually, but I think a lot of different types of technology, it's gonna be a matter of really doing your homework and thinking about who your particular pet is and what's gonna work. Now, if I had my blind cat who's afraid of nothing,

Amy Castro

This cat is afraid. I mean, I can take her outdoors and she's like walking around like she can see, which is crazy to me. That cat, unfortunately, she's one of the fat ones. She doesn't need this, you know, extra calories. But if I ever needed to use a feeder for her, she would have no qualms going up and sticking her head right in that machine, making noise or not. But Pickles McPickleson is afraid of everything. So what I need is I need some kind of automatic pet feeder that makes

Amy Castro

literally no noise and moves really slow. Another thing I wanted to say too when it comes to any kind of technology is to think about the maintenance aspect because I bought many, many battery operated or rechargeable toys that I thought were going to be huge hits and it's all fine and good except that it's maybe burning through batteries or the charge only lasts for so long. One of the things that I found with

Amy Castro

automatic water fountains and we brought this up on our episode where we talked about our favorite products because I love the idea of an automatic water fountain, but it took me several tries to find one that I could maintain and keep clean because some of them you literally have to take them apart down to the innards and get in there and clean things. And if you're not going to do that, then you're better off just using a bowl and washing it out every day. So any other advice when it comes to

Amy Castro

just kind of general questions to ask yourself before you spend the money. Because not everybody can afford to, let's try this feeder and if it doesn't work out, we'll buy another 100 or 200 or whatever dollar feeder. Or is there a way to better check that out that you would recommend? Yeah.

Debbie Richards (12:37.816)

would say, just like any other technologies, I always look for the reviews, comments from other people. You I like seeing the stuff in action. I think that really makes a difference. I know that there are conferences that are catered just for pet owners, and there are vendors that have those things there that you can check them out. So if you can look at them in person and maybe ask the vendor about it, I think that makes a good point. But a lot of it, it just has to do with

Debbie Richards

our willingness to try it and to test it and also with the personality of our pets as well, just like you said.

Debbie Richards

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And our own personalities too, because I think some people have more patience for certain things. I was talking with a friend the other day, I've gone through like four different kinds of cat water fountains and given them all away, except for the most recent one, which is easy to clean. we kind of, well, didn't get into an argument argument, but it was kind of an argument like, that's not so hard. You just take the little flower off and then you take the little pipe off and then you do this and you get a little brush and so I'm like, no, already I've lost interest.

Debbie Richards

I don't want to do all that.

Debbie Richards

Yeah, I can't even change the sometimes the printer cartridge on my printer. So, you know, I don't want to have something that's going to be difficult to work with or I'm going to have to remind myself on on a lot of things.

Amy Castro (14:00.856)

So good things, know, know your pet, know what the problem is that you're trying to solve, know what the maintenance or the operation process is going to be and whether you're willing to do that. And then do your homework. YouTube is probably a great source too. You can hear if it makes noise or you can see a cat's reaction. And it just gives you a little bit more data before you spend your money.

Debbie Richards

would say also, you know, I am an AI consultant, so I will say you can use AI to help you filter some of that out. If you use a product like Gemini from Google, it connects directly to YouTube, so you tell it the type of thing that you're looking for, and it'll give you some resources to look at either websites or YouTube videos and things like that. And I love going out and talking to my AI assistant to help me understand some of those things as well.

Amy Castro

Now see, I'm gonna make sure my daughter listens to this episode because she makes fun of me because I talk to Walter, my chat GPT, and I ask his input, but sometimes I don't listen to him. But I probably should have asked him about like, do you think pickles will be afraid of this thing? All right, so you definitely don't want tech that's gonna stress you out more than the problem that you had. And I kind of did the same thing with my dog water.

Amy Castro

was going round and round about whether I wanted to get bigger dog water. And I realized just with the cleaning process that I've got a giant stainless steel bowl. It's just easy to pick it up, wash it out, and it's always clean. So you got to do what's easy. What's going to reduce your stress, not create more stress along the way. So tell us if you would, and I don't want to turn this into a commercial for products, but I know you saw some really cool stuff.

Amy Castro

Definitely.

Amy Castro (15:43.394)

that really stood out to you there. And I'd like for our listeners to have a preview of what's to come or what they might be looking for in the future of pet tech.

Debbie Richards

Yeah, I saw some things that I didn't even realize that I might need. One of them I ordered immediately because I thought, wow, that's a really good idea. So there was a company called Rescue Retriever.

Debbie Richards

yeah, I've seen videos about them. They're a smoke alarm that is a strobing silent smoke alarm, but you were saying they've added a new product that works with a smoke alarm called the Fire Tag that actually goes on your pet's collar in strobes? Yeah.

Debbie Richards

It emits a high intensity strobe and it sits on your pet's collar. So the challenge is that a lot of pets will hide during fires and it makes them invisible to firefighters when they're trying to rescue them. And sometimes even for us, when we're trying to rescue them. And so what caught my eye was, is first of all, they had a rescue sticker that you can put on your front window that tells the firefighters how many pets you have.

Debbie Richards

with these collars inside so they can look for them as well. But then the other thing is is that when you have a standard smoke alarm, that's going to scream and it's going to scare those dogs into hiding. So this system has a silent vibration and light on the collar so they're not panicked. it is a strobe so it's going to cut through the smoke and they demoed that. And I thought that was really, really neat. The other thing that really appealed to me is that

Debbie Richards (17:17.74)

It was less than $40. know, that's a good price point for me. So I just went out and ordered it. I didn't even think I needed that, but I was like, yeah, I'll get that.

Amy Castro

Well, yeah, mean, anyone that's tried to find a pet when you're trying to take them to the vet, especially cats, like forget about it. The cats turned invisible. They're wearing their cloaking spell or whatever they got going there because, I mean, they will disappear. And so if they're scared and now you add smoke and noise and the smoke alarm, you know, the regular smoke alarm going off in the house, I think that's, that's a brilliant idea and something definitely worth looking into for sure.

Debbie Richards

Yeah. And I'll also say that you were talking about the water fountain and I did see a water fountain there and it was from a company called PetKit and it was called the PetKit EverSweet Ultra. It's a self-cleaning smart water fountain. Auto refills, filters, and it also tracks how many ounces your cat is drinking. the pump sits inside the water, but it doesn't have any cords.

Amy Castro

Sign me up.

Debbie Richards (18:25.804)

So it's powered by magnetic induction, like a wireless phone charger, and that's supposed to make cleaning really easy. And it's really quiet and uses UVC light to kill bacteria. So if you get that pink slime buildup, you know, and junk that's going to be out on Amazon and on their website, PetKits.com. And they said it's going to be shipping in April of this year and the landing cost is going to be around a hundred dollars.

Debbie Richards

So I liked some of the problems that they solved because it addresses some of those things like the cord problem and the sterilization problem and those kinds of things. So I thought that was really interesting.

Amy Castro

Because the cords, trust me, I've been through a million of those water fountains and the cords are always super short. I've had to put them on the bathroom counter or just in a weird spot where you really don't want it, but you're limited because of the length of the cord and the cleanliness thing is huge. mean, especially with multiple cats drinking out of it, I think most people would be very shocked at how quickly those get dirty. And I love the idea of being able to monitor the water intake because cats...

Amy Castro

are in a chronic state of dehydration. They're not natural guzzlers of water like dogs are. so especially as your cats get older, they get more kidney issues. And so knowing how much water they're getting in is great.

Amy Castro

other one that I really want to talk about was an item that won best of CES. I was fascinated by this and I haven't got it yet, but because it involves some AI technology and Pablo and I are going to try it out. it is, and it's something that's very important to us as pet owners and it is a health monitor. They call it the Apple Watch for dogs. And so what it does is it tracks behavior like

Debbie Richards (20:17.034)

shaking, scratching, and it also has a GPS virtual fence. So the shaking thing caught my eye because one of the things that I know as a pet owner and an owner of dogs is over the years my dogs have gotten ear infections. In fact, I was watching, I watched that show on PBS, All Creatures Great and Small, and they were talking this week, Trixie had an ear infection and she couldn't hear.

Amy Castro

Love that show.

Debbie Richards (20:45.516)

And I thought that was really interesting. so it has a specific chart exactly for head shaking that you can chart. also has a 15 day battery. I have bought a GPS collar before and I had to like constantly be recharging it in order to use it. But it felt rugged, but having a two week charge is great. And it also had this feature called the starlight feature.

Debbie Richards

that you can set it and it has an app that you can use from your phone and stuff, but you can make the collar glow in different colors. So let's say you're out walking your dog and my dog is black. So if I can have that glow collar, then I can see him very well. This is shipping now. The price on it is $79. There's also a subscription price with the app and everything. You can pay between six to $12, depending on the functionality and things that you want.

Debbie Richards

And the company that sells this is, I'm going to spell the name. It's S-A-T-E-L-L-A-I dot com.

Debbie Richards

I saw that one on a video too, Satellite.

Debbie Richards

I'll report back to you and let you know what I think about it, what Pablo thinks about it. you know, anything that I can do that can help me understand the activity of my pet, to help with my pet health, I'm interested in. And especially if something is, you know, reasonably priced, I'll probably get that as well.

Amy Castro (22:15.544)

Well, and it sounds like with that longer battery, because that's a huge thing, especially when you're focusing on it from the standpoint of not just being a health monitor, which is a huge factor, but being a GPS. I mean, it doesn't do you any good if the GPS battery is dead and your dog wanders away. So being able to track your pet if they get lost or if they leave the area that you've set up for them to be in is critical.

Amy Castro

And I think that also brings up another point that I want people to take away from this too, is that you really need to understand, like, cause I did go look up that, cause you had kind of told me a couple of the products that you were going to bring up and that was one of them. So I went and I looked at their website, I looked at the videos and it's like, it does a ton of things. And I think it's important that people understand the difference between that and another type of collar. Cause that's

Amy Castro

one of the things that I ran into when I did an episode about a cat of mine that had returned because of her microchip. And it was shocking to me when I put out there, hey, my cat came back after five years and it was next door. And it may not have been next door the whole time, but the comments were things like, well, why didn't you track her? Why didn't you this? didn't it? It's like, it's not a GPS, it's a microchip. And so.

Amy Castro

point being is to really understand what it does because some of these collars, if you think it's going to keep your dog in the yard and it doesn't, then that's one thing. If you think it's going to monitor health or whatever it might be, just, you know, making sure you fully understand all the features and what they mean and what they're going to do for your pet, I think is really, really important.

Debbie Richards

Yeah, that's why I haven't really gotten it yet. was going to check it out and look and see if there's anything else that's out on the market there that's different because that's something I'm definitely interested in, especially Pablo's two years old. We've had three dogs that have passed away in the past three years and you know, your pets can't tell you what's going on. know, so anything that you can use to help identify things I think is very, very important.

Debbie Richards (24:14.626)

Yeah, and I think that the pet industry is seeing that pet parents want that and responding to that. So important. One of the other things that you had mentioned was some smart doors that you saw, because I've struggled with that over the years. had pets that had to be monitored every time they went out. So you didn't want to have freedom to come and go. But what did you see from that standpoint? Anything interesting?

Amy Castro

This one is from a company called PawPort. And what it does is it fits over the top of your existing pet door frame. Okay. And it's a smart door. So it's going to be able to identify the type of animal that is going through that door and it's supposed to keep out the...

Amy Castro

raccoons and the possums and that kind of thing. And I've gone out and looked at their website. They have a ton of stuff. It's pawpawrt.com. And it looks very well made. And so that was one of the things that I found interesting because what I've seen of some doors is that they're not real sturdy. the other thing is, is when you think about having a pet door,

Amy Castro

Who else can get in besides those raccoons and possums and stuff? And so when the person was demoing it closed, you could hear that mechanical funk. It sounded like a steel deadbolt engaging. Pricing is a little steep on it. They started about $700, but if you're thinking about security and thinking about keeping out pets or other things and stuff.

Amy Castro

Then I'm just looking on the website too now, is it says it stops bullets and squirrels.

Amy Castro (26:03.913)

Bullets and squirrels. Okay. There go. There's a combination. Yeah.

Amy Castro

So I'm going to check it out. Like I said, it just kind of depends on if that's a priority for you, if there's a challenge that you're having, and whether or not that's something that you would look at.

Amy Castro

For me in rescue, I'm not always as concerned about what may be coming into your house. I'm always concerned about who's gonna be going back out of the door. So like one of the questions that we always ask on our application is, do you have a pet door? Because if you're gonna adopt a cat and you've got one of those flippy flappy pet doors that just has the little piece of rubber or plastic that flaps and yeah, maybe you can slide a plastic plate in there, but nobody ever remembers to do that. You know, then no, I...

Amy Castro

don't feel comfortable letting you have a cat and knowing that you can retrofit and put something over there that's secure. It's good to know that they're thinking about security and critters and things like that, getting it in and out.

Amy Castro

I want to share one other thing. So I mentioned that CES this year was all about AI and robots. And there were so many different robots at CES. But I remember years ago, my uncle, I'm part Japanese, my uncle's Japanese, and he worked for Sony. And Sony was developing an AI dog. And this was years ago. I would say that this was probably back in the...

Debbie Richards (27:25.952)

early 2000s or something and we visited him in Tokyo and he had his robot dog there and I thought that was really, really cool. wanted that. But I saw at CES some technology that was kind of out there and I thought, well, maybe if you don't want a real pet, this might be kind of interesting. But there was this one robot and it had these frog eyes, it had little arms and it had

Debbie Richards

a patch of fur just on its neck, which was kind of weird. And it kind of looked like a cartoon alien, but they called it a cyber pet. And it's supposed to be for emotional bonding. So it just follows you around, makes eye contact, and it grows a personality based on how you treat it. instead of a face, it has a screen for a mouth and it has those frog eyes on there. And it stores memories and information.

Debbie Richards

and it stores it in a detachable heart module and they showed that. It has it inside this chest. So if your robot breaks for some reason, you can take out the heart and you can put it in another robot. But what I thought was interesting was is that it represents a shift from that useful technology to companion technology. And I thought that was kind of interesting because our pets are companions. I mean, I don't know about you, but.

Debbie Richards

Little Pablo gets up in my lap every night when I'm reading or watching TV and we just bond and I really love that. We have a lot of conversations. And so if there's somebody who needs that companionship, but maybe they aren't good with real animals or can't afford it or something, maybe that's an answer for them. But there were a number of those at the conference. That was just one in particular that caught my eye.

Debbie Richards

Yeah, well, I mean, when you first started talking about that, the first thing I thought about, and I feel like there is a movement in this direction, but we just did an episode on seniors with pets, moving to assisted living, memory care, you know, not remembering to care for pets, and it's like, ding ding ding. I mean, if somebody were open to it, you know, and cognizant of it, have something that provides some level of companionship without...

Amy Castro (29:45.13)

needing to be fed, needing to go out and be walked and things like that. I mean, I could see an application there for sure. But that actually is a good segue to my last question I wanted to ask you was this idea of deciding what's worth it. know, I obviously for somebody that's got unlimited funds, they can buy all the gadgets that they want, but you you've got the practical and then you have the companion or something that maybe is just fun. You know, what do you think would be a good

Amy Castro

just general guidelines for people when it comes to spending money on technology to feel good about the decision that you make to buy something.

Amy Castro

Well, number one, does it solve a problem for you? You know, if it's something that you consider a problem, then then of course that's going to be something that you'll consider. And I don't know about you, but I have bought so many things over the years for my pets to make their lives better and to also make my life better. So I think if it solves that kind of problem, but it's worth it to you. There's so much.

Amy Castro

technology around digital health and why not take advantage of that? know, if we can use that to help our pets lives, then I'm all in. It's got to be affordable, it's got to make sense, and it can't cause more challenges than the problems that it solves. And sometimes there may be some things that are fun and interesting that you can utilize too, but it's got to make sense for your home, for your

Amy Castro

pet family and your other family members as well. So, you know, we're in a home with no children. We just have our pets. anything to entertain them, to keep their lives better, I'm all in.

Debbie Richards (31:27.65)

Yeah, that's definitely good advice. Well, Debbie, thank you so much for being on the show. I know this was a weird foray into the pet world. Maybe not weird, but an unusual foray into the world of pets. But I appreciate your insight. And it was just totally great timing that you just came back from CES. So thank you so much for sharing what you learned and your technological expertise. It's been super helpful.

Debbie Richards

I look forward to hearing the podcast.

Debbie Richards

Yes, thank you. If you got something useful out of this episode, would you please leave us a quick review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen? One or two sentences helps more than you think. It tells the algorithm that this show is worth surfacing and helps other pet parents find it faster. Thanks for listening to the Pet Parent Hotline. If you enjoyed the show, don't keep it to yourself. Text a friend right now with a link and tell them, I've got a show that you need to hear and ask them to let you know what they think.

Debbie Richards

And remember, your pet's best life starts with you living yours. So be sure to take good care of yourself this week and your pets.