Good evening, everybody, and welcome to tonight's webinar at our slightly earlier slot. So welcome for those that have managed to get here. Please don't forget that we are recording these sessions, so they will be up on the website.
So anything that you may have missed or that you want to go back and look at, you can go onto the webinar vet website. From tomorrow and you will be able to see all of the recordings. My name is Bruce Stevenson, and I have the honour and privilege of chairing tonight's webinar.
For those of you that haven't joined us before, if you want to ask a question, please just move your mouse over the screen. The little control bar will pop up. It's usually a black bar at the bottom of the screen.
There's a Q&A box. Just click on that, type in your questions, and they will come through and we will hold those over to the end. And we will get through as many of them as what we can.
If we don't get through them this evening, they will be emailed through to our presenters who have very graciously agreed to get back to you on those. Speaking of gracious presenters, we have two presenters this evening. The first one is Doctor Andrea Looney.
She's a seasoned veterinarian with a long-standing focus on improving the recognition and treatment of animal pain. Initially drawn to the veterinary anaesthesia in the early 1990s, Andrea's career evolved into veterinary rehabilitation and sports medicine, achieving board certification in both of those fields. With experience in private practise, academia and research, she now splits her time between Central Hospital of Veterinary Medicine in New Haven and the Animal Medical centre in New York, specialising in neuromuscular and orthopaedic cases, including sports and working dogs, as well as chronic geriatric pain management.
So welcome Andrea. Our second presenter tonight is Lydia Mendek, and she's the director of operations for 3D Pets. With a background in industrial design from Thomas Jefferson University, she specialised in veterinary applications, collaborating with top surgeons in New York to create 3D printed liver shunt models for veterinary training.
After graduating, she worked as an ER vet tech, where she met her beautiful dog Trip, who is a rescue triple. Now she combines her expertise in design and veterinary care to help 3D pets revolutionise mobility devices using additional manufacturing, working alongside the co-founders, Alex Tow and Adam Hecht. Trip, the company mascot, and the rest of the fabulous team.
And just before I hand over to our presenters, I want to say a huge big thank you to 3D Pet Prosthetics for their generous sponsorship of this evening's presentation. Ladies, welcome to the webinar vet and it's over to you. Thank you so much.
Thank you. And welcome everyone. I just wanted to say thank you again for 3D PETs for including us and to, webinar vets for having us on.
And I also wanted to acknowledge all of the companies with which I've had the privilege and honour of working over time. I've done this for about, you know, 40, 50% of my career. And we've come a long way in providing pets, a lot of quality mobility, and I'm very grateful to all the companies that are out there and grateful for the ongoing research that we have, in our field, which is really exponentially blossoming right now.
Thanks, Lydia, next slide. Wanted to remind everyone that when you start to think about outcomes assessment in our field there's a number of studies that have been published that look at the quality of life in our pets, whether those pets have cancer, whether they have osteoarthritis whether they. Have neurologic disease, and a recent Frontier study using animal welfare assessment grids looked at chronic pain in dogs, and it was interesting because the severity of that chronic pain across multiple systems, you know, no matter what we were talking about, manifested as poor mobility.
That was probably the top sign. And that was preceded by, behavioural changes in many of the patients. But, you know, with focus on quality of life, mobility is right up there.
There was a recent study in PLOS in 2024 where mobility was considered. One of the four major domains of owner reported outcomes of quality of life and senior dogs. So I, I really think our focus on, on mobility can be furthered in so many different ways and we can take this one step further today.
With 3D PETs help and that many of the quality of life indicators probably should from here on out, start to include functional mobility as a key, and how that ability, that quality of life affects the human-animal bond and the ease of The caretaker with that patient, and I think we'll see that as we progress through our, our slide set today that we really have a better focus on how we can make life better for everyone in the family, not even that pet alone. So, next slide, Lydia. We see an awful lot of patients in our practise, and I'm very grateful to the staff at Central Hospital for creating this clientele that have a variety of different symptoms from neurologic patients to post-surgical patients to chronic endocrine issues, geriatric patients, deformities, and for many of our patients with soft tissue injuries of tendons, ligaments.
We do provide a great service in, in trying to find orthotic solutions for these patients. This is a dog, a German short hair pointer, no surprises there, that has an Achilles tendinitis and provided an orthotic to help this animal heal, but the, the downfall of the orthotic solutions is, no matter how great that orthotic is, the chronic use of that orthotic leads further to the need for support, right? Because it actually limits the way that the patient flexes.
Not many of these devices are easy to dynamitize or change over time as the animal heals, and while they do hold that animal up, they are an artificial support, they do create a chronic need for an orthotic in essence, and sores are very common with a lot of these devices, even the best ones out there, and, you know, that's been documented, but we are farther ahead than we were 15 years ago. Next slide, Lydia. Now, an orthotic can't help a dog like this with the left forelimb congenital deformity that affects not only the distal limb but the proximal limb, the elbow, etc.
And years ago, amputation of a dog, I guess a full amputation would have been the norm. However, what we've determined is that the kinematic and kinetic analysis of these patients post receiving a full limb amputation without anything to hold that body in place leads to a lot of significant alterations in the, the biomechanics of the whole body compared to a quadruped dog. So, hence partial amputations and artificial replacements of limbs have come about.
This is just an example of that partial amputation on this dog post-surgically. Next slide, Lydia. It's, it's interesting because the level of limb defect has a very strong correlation with the clinical outcomes in people.
And two retrospective studies have documented the outcomes of socket prosthetics in dogs. There's a few more in the works, but you know, upwards of 80% of owners report a quality of life change and increase post having a prosthetic. And, and that's great, but much of that has to do with trying to get around the comfort and the fit, the ease of application, as I mentioned, I don't think we take enough into account when we talk about quality of life of pets with the family that's involved with them and the lifestyle that they have, as well as the usability, the grip.
And what we end up in a lot of these cases is unfortunately, partially amputations are not without their issues. And a recent paper is actually documented some of these. Next slide, Lydia.
You can see that this dog is doing quite well in terms of the support of the opposite front leg and that, we don't have carpal hypertension, at least we have some support, the opposite elbow and shoulder and the body is being supported. But at the same time, there are pressure sores. They're actually bursa formation at what's left in the limb.
We call that the residuum. There's dermatitis and the animals overall have problems with a lot of the aversion to these devices. They learn to not like them being put on, and escaping the owners when they, when they actually do come forward with the device.
And again, that's that's something we are really trying to work on within the profession. And the good news, next slide, Lydia, the good news is that the materials are, are really improving and I'm, again, I'm so grateful that we have the opportunity to work not only with the companies that have been out there for a while and provided things, but also with the newer companies that help with our partial amputations. If we look at a dog though, next slide, Lydia.
Such as this that actually has a congenital formation, deformation that would be really difficult to work on, no matter what we did. And this, this little puppy had this in both forelimbs, which is really rough to deal with. We have to ask what are the options for this pet?
And even further, some larger pets because post-op quality of life scores have a lot to do and have a significant negative correlation with preoperative body condition score and body weight. So a dog like this, we might find a solution for, but a dog like this, next slide, Lydia. It's gonna be really tough.
And this, this poor dog is such a great dog. Unfortunately, an osteosarcoma of the distal radius and ulna, a different type of soft tissue sarcoma at the elbow, and so partial amputation was not a possibility. And thoracic limb amputation has been associated with the greater stress on the remaining contralateral limb.
Again, negatively correlated with a lot of the, the higher body weights and body condition scores. And you know, in this country, unfortunately in America, we have a lot of obese animals. So we have to ask, what are the options for this guy where full an amputation is necessary and that opposite limb, really is not gonna be able to put up with that weight of this animal for very long, especially given this dog's age.
It's just interesting. I just wanted to mention on this slide, there was a study done by Kirpenstein, that showed the time to reach the animal's quality of life post-surgery, post-amputation was correlated well with the preoperative ability of that patient to adapt to three legs. So if that animal had had more time.
To adapt to a three-legged condition over time as the disease progressed, the animals would have a better quality of life in the long run. So in just a little pearl, if you could take anything away, some of our animals with osteosarcoma, even though we'd like to get working on them soon and maybe you'd come to visit 3D. Has to see how they could work out something for a pet like this.
Do it early, but know that it, the longer we can wait for that animal to kinda offload onto the good leg, might be a, a better thing for the animal in the long run, but we gotta get going early with the manufacturing process and get our measurements in while that dog is upright and looking good. Thanks, Lydia. Next slide.
And there are even worse challenges that we face. Animals that are born congenitally without limbs, and animals that have to have bilateral amputations, double limb amputations, and surprisingly, there's been studies done on this. Next slide, Lydia.
So, if you think about all the options we have, we know that these deformities can lead to a lot of major compensatory changes in the animal's quality of life. We need to really start soon, start at the beginning and think about these pets so that we can preserve their whole body. That's really my goal in speaking to you today.
And why I'm just very pleased to be a part, you know, of a, you know, a process with 3D pets that helps to preserve the animal, the family, in addition to the animal's mobility. Next slide, Lydia. We, we've had studies done on amputation in pets, whether they're partial or full limb, and again, I mentioned that outcomes analysis can be very, very tough in looking at amputated animals whether they're partial or full limb.
This is just a study performed by Wenlin in 2023 and it looked at the outcomes. With partial amputations and prosthetics, and the graft actually shows the objective gait analysis in 8 dogs post partial weight bearing on a prosthetic, and it, it improves over time. But here's the key, even if you look at that graph scientifically, the weight bearing improved in all patients, but the authors noted that the, the animals would often hold up.
The limb when they actually stopped and were standing. In fact, all of them did. And so we have to ask about how comfortable the animal really was.
They also noted a number of different outcomes and problems with the patients postoperatively and again, this is great that we're just starting to document this because we learned so much and we learn what, what better we can do with this. And, and probably most of all, owners are always gonna look at a large investment, especially when it bonds them a little closer to the pet as having a positive outcome. There's a lot of emotions surrounding those amputations.
And compared to the patient preoperatively and compared to the option of euthanasia, yes, those patients are doing better. So the more data that we get, that is objective but really balanced by looking at The outcomes in terms of the problems as well as the positiveness, and the whole, whole body, the axial alignment, the compensatory mechanisms and also the, the family and the environment around them. I think the better off will be.
But we've had some great opportunities to work with cart companies. Next slide, Lydia. And front cart solutions are out there, but I will tell you they're not as numerous as hind cart situations, and many of them tend to be very unforgiving to the sternum and the shoulders.
You'll see in this dog too, and this is a, a great cart, honestly, but you'll, you'll see how dished this animal's tongue is in an effort to try to get rid of a lot of the heat that's generated and how the animals actually slanted towards the amputated leg. And, certainly having issues in terms of mobility. It's probably better than it was, but still not what we'd want.
And the quad carts, next slide, Lydia, quad carts are out there. They're very supportive, and we're, again, we're grateful to have the availability of these, but we tend to think about those as an end-stage solution cause it's not natural for a quadruped animals to move in those, as they did, you know, preoperatively. So this is where 3D PETs comes in, next slide, Lydia.
It really has tended to address the full body dynamics, and the specific issues that we find with many mobility challenged pets, whether they're amputated, partially, fully, or whether they have congenital deformities, or whether they have diseases like muscular dystrophy, probably one of the recent ones that Lady and I have worked on together that really can't move but need a mechanism to move in. These, these devices that the company makes are supportive. They are forgiving, and they tend to allow a more comfortable and natural way encompassing the body to stay in place, so we at least have that device staying on the patient, and I've just, I think that looking at the whole picture of that animal, the family, the process of getting on the environment is really important as we look at that objective data that's in the literature.
Liddy, I'll let you take it from here. Thank you, Doctor Looney. What a great introduction.
All right. So now we've heard a lot about what goes into amputation, and pets' conditions before amputation and the other mobility devices out there. But I want to take a second to introduce you to our team here at 3D PETs.
We set out with the mission to bring pet mobility devices into the 21st century, and we now aim to help pets with all types of mobility ailments, live more active and healthier lives. We're a pretty diverse team, so typically when you think of an orthotics and prosthetics company, you would think that an ONP clinician works there, but we're actually made up of many, many different backgrounds and we have many different roles that all contribute to the final prostheses and devices that these animals are. Using.
So I'll give a brief introduction to our team because we can't do it without them. Let's start with Adam Hecht. He's our co-founder and additive manufacturing director.
He oversees all of the print processes essentially that we put in place for the devices because if you hadn't caught on already, all of our devices are 3D printed. Alex Sowe is next. He is our other co-founder and CEO.
He and I work pretty close together, and he really pushes new product development and, opportunities that we see. He's the one that introduced us to wonderful Doctor Looney, and they founded a relationship, early in the stages of 3D Pets and kind of has brought a lot of information and guidance our way. Myself, I think that Bruce did an excellent job of introducing me, so we'll go ahead and move on to Emily, who's our build technician.
She came from a veterinary technician background like myself. Now she does all of our builds. She starts with the skin or the mould, goes through the digital build process that I'll get into, and then physically assembles all of the devices that we put out.
Our lovely client care coordinator Kristen is next. She has a wealth of knowledge and expertise because she, like me, also has a tripod dog that uses a device really frequently you can see in the picture here. She's on the front lines and she deals with all of our client concerns.
She helps us to better our processes for them and for their pets, and she also works with. Our providers and our clinics that we have relationships with. And last but not least is Annabelle, our content creator.
She is the woman behind all of the fun videos that you're seeing on our social media. She does a lot to inform people of the benefits of these devices, and if you haven't taken a look at them, I definitely encourage it because it is, it's pretty heartwarming. It's a lot of fun to see.
We also have our board, so it's not just all of us working alone, but we have advisors who also have their own diverse backgrounds as well. Doctor Looney, you were introduced to, and again, I think Bruce did a great job, but the rest of the board consists of Anthony Sheena, who is a CCAT and he works in, well, he works with animals now after working in human physical therapy for a long time after he found challenges with his pet Miles. And needed support.
He was inspired to do something that was more rewarding for him and has been super successful, but is just starting out kind of like us. Jason Bagnazi is our business expert. He has years and years of experience and is super passionate about our mission, so he brings a lot to the table as well.
And Doctor Dickie Kennedy works a lot in sports medicine with alternative approaches to pain management and rehabilitation as well. So now you know the behind the scenes of these devices, let's actually introduce you to them. So our devices are highly specialised solutions for pets that face mobility issues, including deformity, amputation due to injury, illness, congenital issues, what have you.
Each solution is created with pets' unique needs in mind, so you can see very different dogs here on the screen that both had the same amputation, yet their devices look very different, and there's a number of reasons for that. Each one is designed appropriately for the pet to support them in the best way possible. So I have.
We'll go back here. Wasn't expecting that, sorry. But I'll give you a little bit of history about 3D pets before we look at those cute dogs.
We were founded in 2021, so we're fairly new. We worked with, another prosthetist, an orthoptist before that who had the goal or the mindset that he wanted to bring his device. And make them more technologically advanced.
Unfortunately, he decided to focus on other things, but we felt that the opportunity was still presented itself to really make these devices the best that they could be, and we decided to found 3D PETs and really bring that mission to life, . We essentially came into it with the knowledge of additive manufacturing and technology and couldn't understand for the life of us why so many industries were seeing the benefits of these technologies, but not pet mobility devices when there was so obviously a need for it. So we decided that we would, you know, kind of be on the forefront of that and start seeing what we could bring to the table with our prior knowledge and now I'll let you take a look at some of our pets before I introduce you to our case.
All right. So, let's talk about our process. Our process is a little bit different than traditional prosthetic and orthotic companies, and there's a couple of good reasons behind that, but essentially we work with clients worldwide, yet our process remains relatively the same throughout depending on the pet, the case where they're located.
So on and so forth. But we start with an application. Every person must apply for their pet and be evaluated before they can purchase.
Each pet will or each person, each client will submit an application for their pet, and then we'll give them a call. We want to talk to these people and figure out if a prosthesis is the right option for their pet because there's some cases where it's not. We want to know what their lifestyle is, what their routine is, if there's a pet who's older, who's already experienced a lot of degenerative changes such as osteoarthritis, and they're more of a couch potato, they don't get out much, they might not be as suited to a prosthesis as a pet who's younger, who has just recently had an amputation, who still has a lot of energy, takes walks, wants to get out there and requires the support.
Of a mobility device to do so. So we take time to get all of these, you know, different information, informative pieces about our pets before we decide if they're a candidate or not. And once we have, we move forward into our second step, a cast or a scan.
Now traditionally, when creating a prosthetic, an orthotic, a brace, or a partial limb solution, really anything that's a customed to a pet. People would work off of a cast. What we can offer is 3D scanning or casting because most of our work is done digitally instead of physically.
So we work internationally with our clients directly or with people in our provider network which are professionals like yourselves who are looking to get involved with these devices and offer them to their patients, and we can allow them to cast, essentially they would do it the same way. That you guys would for any other device. It's it's just flexible tape and a socket net and you cast the area that the device will go on, or we can use a 3D scan that will bring it directly into our software, which is where I'm going to go into step 3.
All of our devices are digitally modified, so we have a custom software and algorithm that takes all of the information from the scanner mould and the pet's measurements that we input and generates a jacket that's completely custom to each pets size, shape, weight, and measurements. Now, like I mentioned beforehand with the dachshund and the Rottweiler standing side by side, this is particularly important because each pet is not the same. I think there's more variability in dogs than there are any.
Species of animal in terms of their size, their shape, their weight, the way that they move even and so creating a device that's suited to these things is super important for them to be successful. So we take into account things like support and flexibility. So obviously the dachshund's device offered less support than the Rottweilers, but we do still try and offer as much flexibility as possible because dogs are dynamic, they're not static.
They breathe, they bend, they move, and it's super important to take that into account. To prevent, like Doctor Looney was mentioning any sort of sores, abrasions, allow them to wear it for longer periods of time and keep them comfortable and moving as naturally as possible. From there, we go to our 3D printers, so all of our devices get, get 3D printed, really, and they do the bulk of the work.
It reduces our man hours a lot and the overall time that the devices take, take to the. All of our devices are printed out of a TPU material, which stands for thermoplastic polyurethane. This material gives us a lot of benefits.
All of our devices are completely waterproof, they're super durable, and they're really lightweight, which is probably the most important factor of the three. You don't want to add a lot of weight to a dog when they're already trying to support their weight on the one remaining limb in the front or on their deformed legs or what have you. And so the lightweight ability of this material is super, super paramount to creating a successful device.
What's interesting though is, in the beginning, we were told we couldn't do it. 3D printing with TPU at this scale is something that's, that's relatively unheard of. It's relatively new, and the material qualities are specific enough that it requires a really tailored approach to create a successful jacket.
It took us many, many tries to Create our first device. And with each test, we learn something new. We're still learning every single day and we're still growing and that's what makes this job really, really exciting.
And we'll move into more of that. But first we're gonna introduce you to Trip. Trip is actually my dog, and so I'm gonna brag about him a little bit and talk about his condition.
Trip was born with a condition called congenital ectodactyla, causing the deformity of his left forelimb and underdevelopment of his right forelimb, which ultimately was amputated at 4 months old. Now, as you can see on Trip's foot there, doesn't look normal. He's got a quite a number of extra toes.
He's got a little bit of hyperextension, and it's not something that was, you know, sustainable for him. When he came in at 4 months old, the recommendation was euthanasia because they didn't understand the extent of his deformities. They didn't know if he was in any pain, if there is anything going on internally, and to So to prevent all of that, the decision was euthanasia.
Now, luckily, Trip came to the vet hospital that I work at, and my vet is a big believer in taking chances on cases like him and many others. And so she said, why don't we start with an amputation. So we amputated his right forelimb and essentially the reason was because he used to army crawl.
So he would throw that right forelimb forward and then flop that left forelimb and he wasn't really doing anything to benefit himself as he grew and developed, you know, he was gonna cause a lot of compensatory injuries because he's trying to use that. Right limb and he doesn't understand that he can't place it normally like a dog should or would. So taking it off prevented that entirely.
He does still have the compensatory changes that tripods do where he brings that front legs more central. He kind of hunches his back and bringing, brings his pelvic limbs forward, and he leans towards that amputated side. So, but because we got rid of the remaining limb, we were able to open him up to prosthetic solutions to address all of those challenges for him, and give him a better quality of life.
So now we're gonna talk about his prosthetic, and the reason why we looked into it. So here's a direct comparison of how Trip gets around with and without his device. The primary concern for him was that distribution of weight.
As most of you probably know, dogs carry about 60% of their weight in the front of their body, and this can vary, but for dogs with big heads and big chests like Trick, obviously he's carrying a good bulk of the weight in his, the front of his body. You can see that his spine kind of has an unnatural S curve to it, and then he's really, really having a lot of labour when he moves. He's bringing the, the front or the back left limb all the way up to his front left limb, and he's kind of using the back right one as just a, like a kickoff like you would on a scooter because he's trying to force all of that weight to be distributed appropriately for him to move forward.
Now, because of this, Trick wasn't able to go on long walks. He wasn't able to go on hikes, he was kind of just a couch potato, and so redistributing that weight allowed him to be a little bit more active, essentially. We also wanted to prevent degeneration.
So when a dog compensates like this or any tripod in general, one thing that we're worried about is degenerative injuries, or the prevention or post, postponing of degenerative changes like osteoarthritis, for example. So Trick was predisposed to all of these things because he is a tripod and because he carries his weight like this, and by giving him the prosthesis and redistributing that weight, we are postponing the inevitable degenerative changes and allowing him to be more mobile for a longer period of time. And that leads us to improving his overall quality of life.
So, like, Doctor Looney mentioned earlier, pain is something that, is highly considered when making decisions about pets. It's a really emotional thing to see your pet in pain and struggling to move. And so we wanted to improve his quality of life because before his prosthesis, trip really would just kind of lay around, he was hanging on the couch.
When he do the things that he wanted to do, we hadn't even discovered the things that he wanted to do. Come to find out Trip's absolute favourite activity is playing fetch, and he loves to run through rivers and try and fish for rocks, and he loves to go on hikes and keep up with all of his foster siblings and my other dog, Nash. And without his advice, those were just simply things that his lifestyle couldn't support.
And so we would have never known if we hadn't proceeded with a device for him and so his lifestyle has completely changed since then. He's a much happier creature being able to go out and run around and be comfortable and supportive and happy with his device. So now we're gonna talk about the technology behind it.
So our number one is efficiency. I kind of touched on it briefly before, but technology does the heavy lifting for us. Our Software and our algorithm do a bulk of the development for the jackets themselves.
We'll plug in the dog's scan of their mould or of their body directly and type in a few parameters such as the dog's weight, their circumference, and a couple of other numbers and details, and it'll generate a jacket that's supportive and flexible where it needs to be. The second is higher adoption. We found that better materials make for a better fit and a better success rate, essentially.
So that's why we were so keen to make the work because it really is the best material for the job. We wanted it to be a scalable solution, reaching animals and professionals worldwide, but not in a way where it just was sent to them. We wanted to be able to support them, and we wanted them to be able to make the changes they needed to their devices as needed, which brings me to number 4 modularity, which is super important because Dogs change, pets change.
They don't stay the same weight or size, or they don't have the same muscle development throughout their entire life. Their weight will fluctuate in the winter or summer months if they're more or less active, and even little things like that can cause the fit of the device to change. So, getting into efficiency.
On the left here, you're seeing the traditional thermalforming method for prostheses and orthotics before 3D printing them essentially. So what you're looking at is a sheet of plastic that's been heated in an oven being draped over a mould of a leg to create the contours necessary for their device and The mould of the leg was created in the traditional sense where you take plaster of pears and you pour it into the, the mould that you've, you've taken on the animal. You wait for it to harden and dry, and then a professional will take that and compare it to the information that they have and kind of recreate a more Closely resembled mould of the pet that they can form over.
These skilled professionals are very good at what they do, but it does create changes to the animal's overall shape, resulting in, you know, pinch points or areas where they're they're more abrasion, and issues like that. Which is something that you don't see when you 3D print directly off the scan as often. So what you see on the right here is one of our older 3D printers creating a jacket for a dog with a full and amputation.
And it's created from the 3D scan, like I mentioned earlier. So the 3D scan is directly of the dog's body. This jacket was tailored to the dog's body, their weight, their measurements, and size, without any sort of modification needed to the pet itself or to the mould itself like you saw earlier, which oftentimes leads to, to a higher success, and, and efficiency of the device as well.
Higher adoption. So here is One of the traditional devices that you just saw, you can see somebody's really torquing down on it to try and bend it, and they do bend. They have a little bit of give, they have a little bit of flexibility, but remember, dogs and other animals are dynamic.
They're not static. And so we want these devices to be able to move with the pets instead of moving or staying against them, limiting their mobility instead of advancing it. Here on the right, you can see a dog in their 3D printed device, and if you look closely in the bottom left, you can actually see him breathing.
So that's the dog inhaling and exhaling in the device moving as he does so, which is something that's, that's really interesting and done because we're able to incorporate flexibility where is needed in the devices. Scalable solution. This is super important.
Here on the left, you see a traditional method of adjusting a device. So, essentially, if the device doesn't fit well, it needs more padding, less padding. It needs to be rounded, sanded to, to prevent any sort of abrasion.
These are changes that need to be done by a professional in the industry. They require. You know, industrial tools and materials, and adhesives and stuff of that nature.
And so oftentimes they need to be sent in, or you need to be able to make an appointment to make those changes. All of those things can be done, but they can be a little bit more time consuming and a little bit more frustrating to the owner because it, it takes longer and it's a little bit more involved. And so something that's super awesome about our devices is that once they're made, they're made and they can go to the people that, you know, are using them for their pets, and they only require, you know, a number of tools to make the adjustments needed, and those tools we send with the devices themselves, so the Owners have them.
So here you can see a, one of our providers is actually adjusting the height and the pitch of the leg for the dog here and she's basing it off of the measurement that the dog had. So this device actually got shipped out to Germany. And so imagine if she had to Get the device, fit the animal, and then say, mm, you know, we need to change these things.
I'm gonna send it back. That'll be less than ideal for her and the pet itself because it's just wasting time, and material and resources. And, and so she's able to go ahead and make those adjustments on the spot and get the dog right back into the device.
This also lends itself well to pets who have different abilities, sizes, changes, and that's why we make our devices modular. So here you can see that same pink device with its traditional foot setup. That's pretty much where, where you're gonna see for that.
You're not gonna see any sort of differentiation of that because it's a full limb prosthetic, and that's what it's, that's what it's for. It's a foot on a leg for a dog who needs it. You can see that it has an acrylic padded foot on it that's filled directly into the pylon there, and then it's adjusted to the dog's needs as much as possible.
But it doesn't work for a dog like Buffy here, who is rather short and stocky, and she needs more constant contact with the ground, which is something that we see in dogs who, like Buffy are shorter, or dogs who are older or more geriatric and have some arthritic changes, and need a little bit more constant assurance, essentially, and support. So all of our devices have a mount that we can Put on custom printed components too. So instead of the traditional period map that you're seeing here, which is the metal piece at the base of the mount there, you're seeing a printed wheel attachment that we need specifically for Buffy and dogs like her to be able to move more freely and unrestricted and be supported as they need to be instead of like the device on the left because that just wasn't feasible for a dog of her size.
Now we're gonna talk about my friend Amira. So, Amira was a part of the dog meat trade and suffered an inhuman bilateral forelimb amputation, resulting in infection and necrosis, which led to surgical intervention. So essentially, all that to say that her legs were chopped off because she didn't fit in a cage, and that was inconvenient for the dog.
She was taken in as part The rescue, rescue mission, I guess. And the rescue brought her into a veterinarian who treated the wounds that she had on her legs and, sent her over here to the US where she was adopted by her mom, who is the biggest advocate ever. And the reason that she got her partial and prosthetics that you're seeing there and why she's wearing all of this pain.
So we're gonna talk about her car versus her partial limbs, and there's a pretty, pretty good visual that you see here of, of the difference, but we're gonna talk about it a little bit. So the, the primary goal is to strengthen her forelimbs. Dogs that aren't using their legs are susceptible to things like apathy, and Amira really wanted to use her legs, and so she would try and use them when she was out of the car, which she was when she was inside, but because she was so short and there were such a short remainder, she couldn't really use them.
And so they could just kind of wave and then she would push herself along on her chest, which wasn't, wasn't good. We didn't want her to be doing that because then at least So open to, you know, different types of injuries to her spine, to her chest, to the remaining nerves on her legs. But we also wanted to preserve her mobility and gait.
Amira is super independent and as you can see, she's able to better, you know, manoeuvre and get around with the partial and prosthetics that she has on, which means that she can kind of go out in her yard with her siblings and be less, less, watch less closely than she would have to be in the car where she pretty easily gets stuck. She's 12 now, and she's still doing great. She goes on her walks every single day.
Her limb function has been preserved very well for the remainder that she has, and she's able to kind of, you know, navigate things like this. The other thing that we wanted to, prevent essentially was any effects that the cart might cause to her spine. So you can see on the back of the cart there, there's a little curved structure.
That's something that we call a yoke. And it essentially uses the back end to help balance the part and it press down on it. So this can sometimes cause pain or changes to their spinal alignment.
It can also cause 8 changes to their back legs because of any sort of discomfort that it's causing or if it's not adjusted correctly. And by giving her partial limbs, she's able to You know, not, not see that because she doesn't have any of that pressure on there. We also talk about manoeuvrability and because these devices aren't as cumbersome as a cart, she's able to move freely.
You know, she can turn, she can move them inside, when she's out and about or resting. The reason why these are so special and accustomed to her is because Amir didn't have enough remainder to To support a traditional style partial and prosthesis. So you can see that these devices had to be suspended or anchored across her chest and over her back in order to keep them on with a flexible sort of strap material so that she's still able to move freely and they're doing quite well.
Now we're gonna talk about my friend Pola, who suffered an, a bilateral amputation of her rear limbs as a result of a traumatic injury. She also has a lumbar fusion, and it forces her spine down at a pretty severe angle, and trying to change that or, or mess with that, it was super uncomfortable for her. And so that's why we got her into a custom part.
She had tried a couple of off the shelf or less custom solutions beforehand, but because they focus on keeping the spine straight in the line, there was nothing that would support the angle that she was sitting at. So that was our first goal was to address that. And then our second goal was to offload the burden from her for limbs.
So as you can see in the second video here, cola is Able to sit back a little bit more on her wheels as they pivot and move with her. She had gone through several, several adjustments since this video. So now she sits a little bit higher and she's able to move a little bit more confidently, but essentially because of the custom nature of the jacket and the device, she's able to have a more natural spinal alignment to her in her specific case.
This also protects her from any sort of impact or abrasion because when Pala isn't doing her fancy handstands like she's doing in the last video, she would scoot along on her rear end, and it would cause her tail or her vulva to be unprotected and open to abrasion, which she dealt with quite frequently. She also had a number of infections as a result of that. And so the protective jacket is not just a part.
But it's also something that we need several different attachments for. So the goal is that Pola is able to wear this jacket wherever she's going out and about with the protection that she needs and the the ability to protect her from impact or. To sensitive areas.
So Pola is in her house and she doesn't want the wheels, but she wants to bump around. She has a little bumper for that if she's out in the snow, she has a ski. She has these changes that are able to support her wherever she is, so she can wear this comfortably and it doesn't have to remain a part set up.
The other important thing that her owners asked for was that something would keep her diaper on. So while she's not incontinent and she has full control, Cola has not been successfully potty trained because of her mobility limitations. She's not able to get up and out when she needs to necessarily without.
So she frequently has abstinence, but because she doesn't have any hips or anything to support a diaper, it just slips off of her. And so this is, this, while it has holes in it to prevent moisture buildup, is able to keep her diaper on when they need to keep it on to prevent accidents in the health field. Summer is next, and Summer was born with congenital bilateral, femoral ulnar elbow laxations, and severe osteoarthritis.
She genetically is a disaster, but that doesn't slow her down at all. We love summer. But because of all of these mobility limitations, she was limited in her ability to really do anything.
She walked in a, in a hunched position. She was constantly uncomfortable, and her mom tried everything. Unfortunately, she wasn't a candidate for any surgery, so her mom has used a combination of stem cell treatments and holistic approaches to keep her comfortable until she was full grown and can get a part.
And so here you can see the difference in Summer's mobility with and without her heart. So on the left, you can see that she doesn't have that proper spinal alignment that we're looking for. And though it's not at a complete side view, she had a similar S-shaped curve in her spine to what Tripp did because she was constantly punched and on her tiptoes that you see there, but putting her in a We were able to prop up the front of her and support her forelimbs so that she is able to move them as she sees fit, but they're still supported and she's able to run at her top speed, which is quite fast.
She's pretty much obese. You can't slow her down at all. And she's, she's been key in developing our parts really because she has put them to the very limits, which is amazing.
The parts are also a good solution for dogs like Sum that are not surgical cases where there's no way that they could sur surgically correct or fuse her limbs into a more natural, stance, I guess, for her. They're constantly flexed or contracted like that, and they're not able to be fixed. They're not able to be anything other than that.
And like we already talked about, it does improve her mobility, as you can see, she's able to run and move and play. Her game of fetch is also her favourite thing in the entire world, and she's she's quite good at it. So we're gonna talk a little bit about the difference here in our parks, like we just did for our full-on prosthetics.
So just like the full and prosthetics, I know I've talked about it a bunch, but they are entirely custom. They're specific to each pet's needs, their wants, their mobility, their measurements and stuff like that because we want to provide individualised support for each pet. They're super manoeuvrable.
So we set up our parts like trikes instead of with the two wheels or in some cases, there's a quad set up, which makes them a little bit less cumbersome and easier to manoeuvre. They're super lightweight because all of our materials and our components are 3D printed. So all the wheels, all of the axles, the jacket itself, they're all 3D printed out of different materials that give it enough structure but keeps it lightweight for these pets.
And they're super adjustable. It's all about identifying the pet centre of gravity, which is essentially where most of their weight is focused, if that makes sense. And we'll talk a little bit about that.
But here you can see a side by side of the same dog. So this dog's name is Winnie, and you can see her in a quad part that is, that's less than custom, essentially. It's something that she purchased off the shelf and so while it's adjusted to almost the correct height for her, it's a little bit high.
It's restricting. Her front end, you see her jumping. And then when she jumps, she hits that yoke that I mentioned earlier, causes a little bit of pain.
So she doesn't have a proper gait or mobility. She also requires her owner to help her steer because she's not able to really do that on her own because she doesn't have the natural gait that she needs. You can see her in her new part, that we've created for her.
She has much better alignment and she's able to be a lot more independent. She can move pretty much unrestricted because we're focused on her centre of gravity. She has the support that she needs in the front.
Another thing that's important is with those off the shelf exoskeletal parts, they like to pull the remaining for imbs back or leave them unsuspended, whereas here she has both of her for libs suspended in front of her in a more natural position for her. Manoeuvrability. So here we kind of see the, the challenges that come with that yo.
So this is Megan, and all Megan's trying to do here is turn around, but because of the rigid design of this part, she's unable to really turn her body to see where her mom is, to see where she's trying to get to. And it takes her a long time to figure out how to actually manoeuvre and turn around. They're also a little bit heavier, than our devices, and so she's having a hard time lifting herself up in the rear to push it forward.
Again, because of that yoga, because of the weight of the part, and because it's so cumbersome. So this is actually at her fitting. This is her first time wearing a cart, believe it or not, and her doing the same activity.
So we're, we're putting her through the same exercises and we wanted to see how she would turn and go see her mom. Now, when Megan is not wearing a cart, she's perpetually in like a downward dog position. She rests on the front of her chest, on the front of her legs, and she scoots around like that.
And so being able to put her in a cart like this. Is able to support that natural spinal alignment and help her manoeuvre a little bit better so she can get around where she wants to go, which is always with her mom. We're gonna talk about the light weight of the devices.
So here you can see this dog is struggling to get moving on pavement. You can see he's pretty boxed in there with all of those rigid pieces of metal, and he's kind of struggling to get enough forward momentum to move forward because there's, there's Constant downward pressure in order to hold this dog into the cart, there's downward pressure on the front and rear of the spine to keep him in place, and that makes it hard for him to lift himself up to get any sort of forward momentum. We don't have a direct side by side for this one, but this one's pretty, pretty similar in size, and this is the grid.
He also had a car like that before him, but unfortunately we don't have any videos, and this is him in his 3D pesar trike set up, where he's able to lean totally forward, he can move his back and unrestricted. His remaining for limbs are supported instead of tethered back, and he's able to get enough momentum to kind of move forward because the centre of gravity of the device is positioned appropriately for him. Which brings me to my next point is being adjustability.
So those exoskeletal parts that you saw are ones that came off the the shelf, and while they are adjustable, it's primarily in height and width. There's not a lot to do with, you know, the, the dynamics of a dog in the centre of gravity, which is what we focus on. Here you can see the pivot point on the map where we have Perth joints designed so that you can change the, the angle of the device to To the pet's needs essentially based on their centre of gravity.
So we pitch it back a little bit further if they need to move forward if they need. And then additionally on top of that, we can change the height or the width as needed, but it allows for just more points of adjustability. This is something you can see here that we're doing in our shop, but it's very easy for our owners to do it at home as well for their pets as they change because like we mentioned beforehand, pets don't stay the same, and they will need adjustments throughout their time wearing the device.
So now we're gonna talk about one of our non-canine friends, this is Beau, and Beau was born with a congenital deformity called a persistent open fentanyl, which left him at risk for serious brain injury and neurologic health complications. Bo was super young, but he was diagnosed with a persistent open fentany at about 12 months old. When they, they ruled out that it wasn't gonna close for him.
And so, as if any of you know goats, you know that they really like to headbutt. They're super social animals and they like to move out and around. But in order for him to do all of those seemingly normal things, he needed to be protected.
So here you can see him doing exactly that, sticking his head where it doesn't belong, but we want to preserve his comfort and independence and allow him out in the field with his friends. So before his helmet, he needed to be supervised constantly. We couldn't be left alone with other goats because as you can see, his friend here has come up and bumping in behind him, and we didn't want that to happen on the exposed part of his skull or brain.
And so he needed a helmet to be able to essentially protect him from his playmates and let him out in the field. So he was able to do that. We wanted to prevent further health challenges such as a traumatic brain injury or any sort of neurologic health complications that could, as a result of getting, getting bothered essentially in that, in that sensitive exposure.
Area of his skull. And so that's what we wanted to do by protecting it with a helmet. He is able to headbutt, run, play, do whatever you want because we have a little bump out supporting his, not supporting.
We have a little bump about protecting that area in his skull, and allowing for these normal activities that, to occur without any sort of risk of injury to him. So what's next for 3D Pets? You've learned about our history, you've learned about our team, you've learned about where we're at with the devices that we've made.
Like Bruce mentioned in the beginning, we're open to any sort of questions you have about the details of them, but right now, let's talk about what's next. First up is new products. We know that there's a tonne of mobility conditions that we don't get addressed, that we definitely could, and so we're constantly innovating on what we have to offer.
We, we grow. And we learn every single day. And so there are times when people will bring us pieces that we haven't worked on before, and they'll tell us that it's a great opportunity.
And so we do a lot of research and we'll move into it. Doctor Looney is especially good at this. She seems to find all of the cases that don't fit into the mould of devices currently offered.
And so it's, it's a great way for us to kind of push the boundaries that we've already seem to push and find these solutions for these pets that need them. The second is physical therapy and rehabilitation. So pets go to PT and rehab regularly, but it's not always tailored to the use of their device.
It's usually just tailored for them to be able to work with what they have. So we're working with a lot of our board members and other PT and rehabbers out there to kind of make these custom programmes or exercises for pets with their devices to be able to strengthen them. Alongside their device.
Training is more specific to clients and pets. We want these pets to be able to use the devices as best as possible, so not compensating strangely and being able to offload the weight properly. And then we want to grow our provider network, which we'll get into and I hope that some of you are interested in.
New products. So we talked about Cola earlier. We talked about all of her attachments.
The other thing that we have just launched and are now offering is our articulating elbow, which is something that I personally am super excited about and the rest of our team is as well. So this. Elbow is for all of our full limb prosthetics.
It allows dogs to wear them longer and more comfortably and in different environments. Up until this point, it was, it was rather challenging for pets to be able to lay down or rest with their devices. And so that was always a And it would inhibit owners from moving forward with the process because they would say that my dog gets tired, they need to lay down, or what happens if I'm out with him and I need him to lay down or what have you, and they weren't able to do that with their devices and so they're taking on and off with the devices was something that would put a pause on their decision to move forward.
But now that they have something like this, we've seen a lot of success with them and the pets seem to be doing really well with them, but not without sort of training and rehabilitation. So now we're gonna talk about rehab. So like I said, we're working day in and day out with our physical therapists and rehabbers, but as you can see, Trip, this is my dog here in the water treadmill, has a fairly natural gait where he's walking and placing all of his legs appropriately because he's able to use the prosthesis in assistance with that.
And so up to this point, it's depending on the Physical therapists in rehab or some are more open to it and some aren't, and they have different tailored approaches to their physical therapy and rehab, essentially, but we're working to develop these exercises for these pets to be able to use their devices in these scenarios to kind of help them be rehabilitated and continue with the physical therapy, make them stronger and make them more successful in their device when they're not in these scenarios. Training comes along with that. So obviously, you can't just put these devices on these pets and let them go.
A lot of our videos or the videos that you see online kind of highlight those feel good moments, and so that's the impression that you get. But there's a lot of training that goes into the use of these devices. So on the left you can see Kita here learning to use her brand new elbow.
She doesn't lay down like a typical dog would. She has to learn to kind of lay down by speeching back to to activate that elbow, essentially to move it forward so that she can lay down, instead of sliding her front and forward like a dog with four legs would. And you can see here trip on the right is learning to trust his device, essentially, and this is something that we put a lot of emphasis on because it's one thing for a dog to wear a device, it's entirely different for them to actually use it.
So you can actually see that foot compressing as he leans his full weight on it, and so we're teaching him to use this as he's. Standing Doctor Lee mentioned earlier that a lot of dogs will use their devices when they're moving, but they'll lift them as they're standing. And so we focus a lot on teaching dogs that they can stand and lean on them and it's actually what they're supposed to do, but it is a process.
And so creating resources like this for our families leads to better outcomes for their pets. Lastly, we're gonna get into our provider programme. We work with industry professionals worldwide.
So this is our provider out in Germany. She's fitting one of her patients with our devices. And so the opportunities for this are, are growing every day.
We want our providers to be as independent as possible with their devices, but essentially the way that it works is they follow the process. That a client would, and they get discounts or kickbacks for the clients that they refer to us and the devices that they use and they get the same kind of customer care that any of our clients would, but they have these clients have professional support in their providers all around the world because we're just based out of New Jersey and we can't be everywhere at once, so it's been a great resource to them. And that's pretty much it and as in terms of the informative part of my presentation, but I want to end it with a cute little clip of some of our dogs.
We were featured in the Apple campaign last year or the year before, which is super exciting for a young company like us, but it does a really good job of kind of summing up everything that I talked about in a really feel good way. It'll talk about our process, our team, and the devices themselves. So thank you guys for listening to all of us, here and enjoy this video.
I met Trip when he was 4 months old, and the first time I saw him, I just, I fell in love with him. He was brought to the veterinary hospital to consider euthanasia due to his deformities. We decided to amputate for his quality of life.
I was not in a place to take a trip, but I couldn't help it. He needed a person and I needed him. We go.
Oh boy. The process to build a pet prosthetic starts with a full body scan. We use the LIDAR scanner and true depth camera on the iPhone to scan and build 3D models of the pets that we work with.
From these detailed scans, we then design the perfect prosthetic for each animal. People think when they lose a leg, it's over. People look at him and they think, you know, poor guy, like he's missing his leg.
He sees himself as a regular dog. He just loves life. In the end it's so rewarding getting to see him be a dog and live his life and just love it that would rescue him over and over again.
All right. So that's the end of my spiel. Again, thank you guys for listening and thank you, all of you and Doctor Mooney and the webinar that for your continued support and for this opportunity.
I don't know if Bruce has anything else to add, but at this point, I believe we're gonna go ahead and open the floor to some questions. So, Lydia and Andrea, thank you so much for your time tonight. This is just mind-blowing stuff.
I personally am a huge believer in pain control and quality of life, but I don't think in my nearly 40 years as a vet, have I ever, ever seen anything that improves quality of life like you guys do with 3D pets. So, well done to you and absolutely amazing stuff. So, thank you so much.
And a huge big thank you to 3D Pet Prosthetics for the sponsorship of tonight to share this amazing stuff with us. We've had a lot of questions coming in, most of which were answered in your last 2 or 3 slides, Lydia. So that was really fortunate because we have run out of time.
But just also to say that, Dawn has popped the web address, in the chat. So for people that want to get hold of you, they can go onto your website, I presume, and make contact with you that way. And, all the questions that have come through, as well as all the accolades and, and amazing comments to yourself and to Andrea, you will get to see those on email.
Is there a better way to get a hold of you than on the website? No, the website's perfect. You can also, you know, reach out to us on all of our social media platforms as well as our email.
It's info at 3D pets prosthetics.com. If you guys wanna give us a phone call and talk to Christen, the phone number.
Is 973-658-4620. Hopefully all that information is relayed your way, but otherwise, yeah, just use the website. You'll still reach one of our team members and we'll direct your questions or anything else that you guys need to the right person.
Fantastic. That is absolutely amazing. And I, I wish we hadn't run out of time because I'm sure that we could watch these videos and listen to both of you for another hour at least.
So, Andrea and Lydia, once again, thank you so much for your time and for sharing this amazing technology with us. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.
Thank you to everybody who has attended tonight. I hope you are as impressed and blown away with this amazing advance in our profession as I have been, and, yeah, get hold of them. They will answer all your questions and make a huge difference to quality of life of our pets.
How amazing is that? Lastly and not least to Dawn, my controller in the background for making everything run smoothly. Thank you, Dawn, and from myself, Bruce Stevenson, it's goodnight.
