PITTSBURGH (Newsradio 1020 KDKA) – Former Pirates Garrett Jones, Alex Presley, Michael McKenry and others are joining forces with a new phone app that aims to provide users real-time health alerts for their dogs.
Matt and Laura Gelfand are the founders of TailTrax, a mobile app available for IOS, Android, and web based devices.
“My best friend, Matt Gelfand, me and Garett Jones got connected with him a couple of years ago,” Michael McKenry told Larry Richert and John Shumway on KDKA Radio Monday morning. “I threw Andrew McCutchen’s bachelor party and I have a buddy that is a Navy Seal and he introduced me to Matt.”
Michael and Laura founded TailTrax after the death of their two dogs, Max and Rocky, to cancer within one year. It was too late to treat the cancer by the time it was identified in their pets. They grew frustrated with the lack of information available for their pets’ family medical history and decided to start TailTrax.
“It’s going to connect litter-mates through their vet that cared for them,” McKenry said. “So if you take your dog to the vet right now, the vet just treats the dog with the symptoms that they have that day. Now with TailTrax, the vet can actually look across the litter-mate family to other vets serving those litter-mates and see what’s going on.”
“It’s kind of similar to how we go to the doctor,” McKenry said. “We have a health history, now your dog has a health history. So you can possibly catch some things early on and maybe some preventative features.”
McKenry told Larry and John that the app is still in its very first stage. “We only got into the app store about a week ago. We’re trying to collect enough data on the dogs, collect enough litters, and then we’re going to open up the real time health alert system,” McKenry said. “Then social media aspects of it, an in-app store that will give back to different types of charities, especially rescues.”
At an event in Nashville with the Humane Society, McKenry said the Humane Society signed up their whole dog database for the app. They will be able to pass or transfer every dog that is adopted in Nashville to the owners that get them so litters can be reconnected.
“That’s what the app is intended to do,” McKenry said “it’s to put families back together.”
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