(calm music)
- Hi everyone, my name is Kate
and I'm a Pack Support Representative for Ruffwear,
joining me today is my coworker Katie
and my coworker Bailey,
Katie is our Product Innovation Developer
here at Ruffwear
and Bailey is one of our office dogs
who helped Katie in her recent research
around our cooling gear
and the cooling technology that we use in our gear,
so we're here to learn a lot from Katie about her research
and the data that she's found,
but Katie before we dive in,
why don't you just give us an overview
of when we say cooling gear,
what are we talking about?
- We love adventuring with our dogs,
sometimes that takes us to really hot places
and we still need our dog to stay cool
to maintain our adventure in the dog's comfort level
and there might not always be a stream
or a lake we can dive into,
or shade we can hide behind,
so we created the Swamp Cooler Family
that allows us to bring a cool environment with our dog
on our adventure in the heat,
you get the product wet
and put it on our dog,
and it creates that cooler environment.
- That's great Katie,
so we have these products that are designed
to keep dogs cool
and you have done some interesting research,
what's this research all about?
What question were you trying to answer?
- In the history of Ruffwear,
the Swamp Cooler product was shown at trade shows
and other in-person events
where there's a giant tub
with all of the Swamp Cooler products in them
and then given to people to try out for a few hours,
and that experiential learning
got people onboard to understand
and see how the product works,
but now that we're in a larger company
and there are people coming into the retail store
that don't get the experience with a wet Swamp Cooler vest
to put on their dog in the hot sun,
we want a way to quantify how the Swamp Cooler's working
and show that our experiential learning
of that hands on with the product
actually translates to a number
and a value we can say that the Swamp Cooler Family
increases cooling for dogs.
So, the research that I setup is with seven different dogs
with different coat types,
that was another big interest of how does the Swamp Cooler
affect dogs from Huskies to Short Haired Pointers
and does it affect them all the same?
And also, how can we quantify
how much cooling effect there is on a dog,
like what experience is the dog having with that garment on?
We used two different methods to quantify
what the dog's experiencing,
one was through thermal imaging with a FLIR camera,
which is a Forward Looking Infrared Thermal Camera
and that gets the thermal picture if you will
or the heat that is coming off of the dog
as well as the surrounding environment
and then we also did sensors that measured
the heat loss off of the dog,
so how fast the dog was cooling from the surface of the fur
to the garment or to the air.
- And Bailey was one of the dogs in your research,
just curious I mean as y'all saw
Bailey is a Golden Retriever,
where does her coat kind of fall within
like the lineup of dogs that you tested?
- Bailey was in the middle,
we had a Husky
and a Burmese Mountain dog,
Denali and Bruce,
and Bailey is a medium coat dog.
- Who is loving this Pacific Ring.
(laughing)
So, Bailey's kind of there in the middle, okay.
- And then we also had a few other medium coat dogs,
and several short haired dogs,
Nova and Vilus,
I mixed in a German Short Haired Pointer
and then also a Wired Coat,
Sturgill, a Griffon.
- So, definitely a wide variety of coats,
so that makes me feel really good,
just knowing that this is something that has been tested
across a variety of dogs,
so let's kinda dive in,
I'm really curious,
so you were able to essentially see
how the cooling technology was like in our Swamp Cooler gear
was working on these dogs,
how were you able to see this?
- Yeah, so the setup was really key to this whole process
and taking a laboratory style research approach
where we can control the environment
to observe differences in the product itself,
we used our video studio to set it up
with a controlled environment,
we knew what the ambient humidity was
as well as the ambient temperature,
we had a controlled temperature of the water
that we were using to wet each of the garments
and also a timeframe that was consistent for each dog,
that they had the garment on,
that they were reaching their ambient
or acclimatized temperature
and then tested two to four of the garments on them.
- [Kate] Okay, so it sounds like you had these cameras,
you had these sensors,
you had your lineup of dogs,
I'm sure there were many treats-
- [Katie] So many treats.
- What is next?
How do you go about doing these tests?
- Let's walk through Bailey's experience
of coming into the room
and modeling for the Swamp Cooler Family.
- Yeah, because Bailey can't tell us about her experience,
but you can.
- So, Bailey comes in
and hangs out in the room for around 10 minutes,
she's getting acclimated to the temperature
as really what I'm looking for
is her to be at her natural temperature in the room,
then she's also getting accustomed to the room too,
so she's smelling around,
seeing what other dogs are there,
what sort of mail have they left
and where are the treats,
or toys in Bailey's case,
then we take a picture of her with the FLIR camera,
that shows us the image of what her baseline temperature is,
so what is her temperature at the ambient
or room temperature.
We have as part of the setup a black backdrop
which reduces any light or reflective heat
coming off of all of the lights the studio room has,
we also have a tub of water to dunk the garments in
to get them wet,
so then after we take Bailey's first picture,
we do a baseline read of her fur temperature
or surface temperature of her fur
and her baseline heat loss,
and that gives us our baseline reading,
so we can then quantify how much cooling
the garments provide to Bailey afterwards,
then after 10 minutes of her in room temperature,
we put on the first garment after dunking it in water,
then wringing it out,
took a picture,
then waited five minutes for her to get more accustomed
to that garment-
- [Kate] For it to kinda take effect?
- [Katie] Yeah and then put the sensors against her fur
and the garment,
so in-between,
there was one on her back
and one on her chest,
and then took the garment off after 10 minutes of wearing,
took another picture,
so we got her surface temperature,
what the FLIR imagery is reading
and then let her acclimatize again
or acclimate to the room temperature
for another 10 minutes before going onto the next garment.
- And you did all,
all garments in the Swamp Cooler line?
- Yeah.
- So, she would acclimate in-between those?
You would bring her kinda like back down to baseline
and then test another garment? Okay.
So Katie, you mentioned a specific camera,
I think you said FLIR,
is that right?
- [Katie] Yeah.
- What is a FLIR camera exactly?
- A FLIR camera is a Forward Looking Infrared camera,
it allows us to see the temperature of the dog
with the garment on or without the garment on,
so we can have a very clear visual image
of what the cooling garments are doing.
- Okay and what exactly does a person see
when they're looking at the images?
- With the thermal imaging,
it's a range of purples
and yellows,
yellow means that it's hotter or white is the hottest,
we set our bounds to 100° as the hottest
and 50° as the coolest that the camera picks up,
so the backdrop is showing a pinkish purple
and the dog looks orange,
there are more purple aspects of the dog,
like the tail which is cooler
because the tail doesn't have a lot of blood flow
or heat generation
and then the mouth is a very yellow almost white,
which is a much hotter portion of the dog
and then as we keep going down the spectrum of images,
the purple color comes onto the dogs fur
where the Swamp Cooler was as we're removing that garment
showing that the dog's fur temperature is cooler-
- [Kate] Is now cool, right.
- [Katie] And then 10 minutes later
after the garment has been removed,
there's still that purplish shadow
from the Swamp Cooler being worn.
- So Katie, this is all really interesting stuff
and I'm just curious to find out ultimately,
what did you learn?
- Well first, the cooling gear works.
- Okay good, I'm glad.
- We have a very clear visual image
that we can see the cooling gear in action
and that the dog is cooler with it on,
the sensors also tell us
that there's greater rate of cooling off the dogs
while they have the gear on,
though we also learned that the cooling garments
vary across coat type,
compared to their baseline,
Nova who is a Short Haired Mix
was two times cooler with the cooling gear on,
Sturgill the Wirehaired was five times cooler
with the cooling gear on
and Bailey,
Medium Coat was six times cooler
with the cooling gear on
and then with Denali,
a Double Coated Husky
was eight times cooler with the cooling gear on.
- Oh wow, that's really good to know,
that's a question that I often get asked,
you know customers with dogs with a thicker coat,
they wanna know like,
"Will this cooling gear actually work for my dog?"
- Yeah and it definitely does,
it gives that extra boost,
where with Huskies,
they're really good at controlling
their natural temperature,
but putting a cooling garment on them
does help them to stay cooler.
- So Katie, you've done all this really great research,
but it's all been in this controlled environment,
here in our studio,
so how can you take what you've learned
and how can we apply that to the experience
that our dogs are gonna have out on the trail?
- There are always gonna be a lot of different variables
for our dogs on the trail,
whether that's the temperature,
humidity, amount of sun versus shade,
water that they can access,
but what we found is that the cooling gear
makes our dogs cooler when they have it on,
depending on the environment
and those variables,
we may need to recharge it more
and help them to support that cool environment.
- But regardless, they're staying cool?
- Yeah, exactly.
- Cooler than they would be without it.
- Yes.
- So, that's great because that means for me,
my thick coated Husky Mix,
I can know that this is working for her,
I can take her out on longer hikes,
I can cool her down more
and know, have like peace of mind.
- Exactly and this is gonna help you stay out there longer
and is one tool that we can use to keep our dogs cool,
in addition to giving your dog plenty of water to drink,
maybe boots if the ground temperature is really hot
and also plenty of breaks,
in the shade if there is any shade
and making sure that they have time
to cool off on their own in addition to the cooling garment.
- Yeah, for sure.
I like that,
one more tool in our toolkit,
that's great.
Well, thank you Katie,
this has been really insightful,
you've given us a lot of data,
I like how we were able to kinda go behind the scenes
and see what this testing has been like,
so thank you for sharing.
- Thank you so much.
- Yeah and for you all watching,
you know if you have any questions,
feel free to reach out to us,
you can email bark@ruffwear.com,
that B-A-R-K
and we'll be happy to answer any questions that you have,
until next time,
have a good one.