As pets become family, care products are expected to offer more than function: comfort for animals, confidence for owners, and meaningful moments for both.
Mildberry
2021
6 minutes
Pet products combine essential care with a strong emotional dimension. As animals increasingly become family members, owners expect more than food, hygiene, or basic veterinary support: they look for products that improve comfort, reduce uncertainty, and strengthen everyday connection.
Support comfort, calm, and security during separation, travel, or changes in routine.
Help owners recognise an animal’s health, behaviour, and emotional state—not only its location or activity.
Use connected products and automation to support feeding, play, monitoring, and daily routines.
Create experiences that are meaningful for the animal and emotionally rewarding for the owner.
Pet wellness includes how safe an animal feels when its owner is not there. AIR Cage imagined a connected carrier for air travel. The concept combined monitoring with comfort-oriented features, addressing both the pet’s journey and the owner’s anxiety while apart. My Pet–My Scent approached separation anxiety through scent. The kit allowed owners to transfer their own scent to a collar locket, offering a familiar sensory cue to a dog while they were away. The idea turns an intuitive owner behaviour—leaving a worn item with a pet—into a dedicated care product.
Wellbeing is not only about a pet’s physical condition. It is also about comfort, familiarity, and calm.
The next generation of pet technology goes beyond tracking movement or location. It attempts to make animal wellbeing more legible to people. Wisdom Panel uses DNA testing to identify breed composition and screen for genetic health risks. Inupathy takes a different approach: its wearable harness analyses heart-rate data and uses coloured lights to visualise a dog’s estimated emotional state, such as relaxation, excitement, happiness, interest, or stress. An accompanying app can track patterns over time. Such tools do not replace veterinary care or an owner’s own observation. Their value lies in giving owners more signals to interpret behaviour and notice possible changes.
Data becomes valuable when it helps an owner notice what an animal cannot explain.
Connected devices can maintain routines when owners are busy or away. Petcube combined a pet camera, two-way audio, and remote play. PetSafe developed automated feeders and play products that supported regular feeding and stimulation. Robotic and app-connected formats such as GoBone and Fable explored ways to make independent play more engaging through moving toys and remote control. Each product addresses a different task—checking in, feeding, entertaining, or maintaining a schedule. Together, they show how the category is moving from single-purpose gadgets toward a more continuous care ecosystem.
Smart pet care should reduce uncertainty—not add another device to manage.
The pet category also creates value through small rituals of play, affection, and shared entertainment. Toys, treats, accessories, subscription boxes, and photo-friendly products give owners moments to enjoy with their animals. The strongest examples are not “cute” for their own sake: they provide stimulation or comfort to the pet while giving the owner a meaningful and often shareable experience.
Brands outside the category can participate as well. Spotify created Pet Playlists tailored to animals and their owners, using listening preferences and pet characteristics to generate a shared soundtrack. It is a simple example of how a non-pet service can become relevant by recognising the emotional role animals play in people’s lives.
Pets are a powerful emotional cue. But the experience must create value for the animal, the owner, or both.
Humanisation does not mean treating pets as miniature people. It means that owners increasingly apply family-level expectations to the products and services they choose for animals. They look for safety, clear ingredients, dependable services, home-friendly design, and proof that a product improves an animal’s wellbeing. The pet is the end user; the owner is the buyer, decision-maker, and advocate. Effective innovation needs to serve both sides of the relationship.
The best pet innovations begin with a genuine tension in the care relationship: separation, travel, uncertainty, routine, stimulation, safety, or connection. Technology can make care easier and more visible. Emotional value makes it relevant. Together, they turn a functional purchase into a trusted part of everyday life.
The pet is the user. The owner is the customer.
Love your furry friends