About The Animal Scope

We are a new medical device start-up based in Atascadero, CA. The Animal Scope’s goal is to provide affordable and quality medical device products in order to improve the lives of animals around the world.  We are currently in the prototype testing phase of our start-up and are looking for volunteers and visually impaired dogs to test our blind dog bumper product.

Facebook

Be sure to check out The Animal Scope's Facebook page for more information on our start-up.

Twitter

Be sure to check out The Animal Scope's Twitter to stay up to date on what's going on at our start-up.

YouTube

Check out our informational videos on our Moondog Bumper Project and media updates from our company.

The Inventor

Valerie Porter

Owner and Inventor

Valerie is a Biomedical Engineering PhD student
at the University of California, Davis with a specialization in medical imaging.  She found The Animal Scope LLC in 2019 and engineered Moondog Bumper during her undergraduate studies when her family pet, Chatter, went blind as she aged.   
She is combining her passion for engineering and veterinary medicine within her company to design veterinary medical devices  in order to improve the quality life for
 animals around the world.

The Animal Scope's Story

The initial idea for the company began during Valerie’s early college years when she decided that she wanted to design and specialize medical equipment for animals.  She had dreams of becoming a biomedical engineer and a veterinarian and combining both disciplines to continue the development of veterinary medical technology.

In early 2017, her family dog, Chatter, began to lose her sight from the development of cataracts in both of her eyes.  Chatter was a 10 year old toy poodle that Valerie had spent many years in her youth training in agility and rally.

When Chatter could no longer see, Valerie’s family bought her a stroller to help protect Chatter from running into things around the house.   However, because Chatter lost access to walking around the house, she began sleeping in her stroller all day long and only exercising to go to the bathroom.  Valerie and her family began to worry about Chatter developing arthritis and/or depression.

In order to help Chatter walk around more often and safely, Valerie began to design a bumper that can easily attach to a harness.  This would allow Chatter to safely walk around and explore without her family constantly helping her avoid obstacles.

Chatter was able to move around the backyard under supervision in the original bumper design and quickly learned where obstacles were.  The bumper allowed her to safely bump into objects and learn how to avoid them.  After seeing Chatter’s success, Valerie wanted to help other blind or visually impaired dogs gain mobility again.  She also wanted to help dog rescues have more success in finding homes for blind and senior dogs.  Our bumper can offer some peace of mind to potential dog owners about providing a healthy and safe environment for their blind dogs.

Then, Valerie started The Animal Scope company in July of 2018 in order to help provide this affordable safety device for blind dogs to the public.  The Animal Scope was formed into an LLC in June of 2019.