Pawfessor

Abstract

Americans adopted millions of dogs during the pandemic. However, as new pet parents return to work, many pets might be returned to the shelter. The top reason dogs get returned to animal shelters is because of behavior problems such as destructive aggression, barking, and disobedience. Many dog parents don’t want to pay for a trainer or classes because of the high cost. If dog owners know how to train their dogs, they can bond with their new dogs. Unfortunately, returning dogs to shelters increases their risk of premature death. Most animal shelters have capacity issues, often resulting in dogs euthanasia when capacity is full. Therefore, training dogs is a good way to avoid dogs returning to the animal shelter or being abandoned.

Every dog and owner is different in their needs, and it’s challenging to find a suitable training method or professional trainer. Therefore, I want to create an accessible for all training levels and rescue and special needs dog training app to fulfill users' needs and help users solve their dogs’ undesired behavior. There are various dog training apps to learn commands and tricks in the current application market. Most dog training apps only offer professionally tailored programs, but they cannot help offer fixed textbook solutions without much flexibility to consider the different personalities a dog may have. Based on my research and communication with the professional dog trainer, I learned that different dogs have distinct personalities and require different training methods. Some dogs are open and friendly, whereas some are very timid. The most effective way to train a dog is based on its behavior and characteristics.

To create a unique application different from others, Pawfessor has an avatar function that can transform the user’s dog image into a 3D look-alike and automatically bring the avatar to the dog profile and embed it into the training documentation as well. Therefore, users will see the avatar as a representation of their ideal dog.