The New Frontier of Preventive Pet Care
Three founders building the early-detection layer of pet health sit down with The Underbite: Rhett Rumery of Tether (wearable pain monitoring for dogs), William von der Pahlem of DeepScan Diagnostics (cell-free DNA cancer screening), and Fayzan Chaudry of Everfur (metabolomics fur testing plus a pet health app). They explain why veterinary medicine stays reactive, how long disease hides before symptoms appear, and why continuous longitudinal monitoring could move pet-care spend earlier over the next decade.
For decades, veterinary medicine has largely operated reactively. A dog limps, stops eating, develops visible symptoms - and only then does treatment begin. But a new wave of founders believes the biggest opportunity in pet health isn't treating disease later. It's detecting it earlier. Much earlier.
In this conversation, the founders of Tether, DeepScan Diagnostics, and Everfur break down how wearables, biomarkers, AI, metabolomics, and longitudinal health tracking could fundamentally reshape pet care over the next decade. From silent cancers and chronic pain to metabolic changes hidden beneath the surface, these companies are building tools designed to catch what owners and even veterinarians often cannot see — until it's too late.
Rhett Rumery - co-founder & CEO at Tether
For readers unfamiliar with Tether, what exactly does the company do, and what problem in pet health are you trying to solve?
Rhett Rumery, Tether: My dog Söze was diagnosed with degenerative myelopathy too late to intervene. After his diagnosis, I went back through everything, the videos, the photos, the way he had been moving for months, and I realized he had been in pain long before I caught it. I missed it. He hid it the way dogs do, so I couldn't see the drift. That's the moment Tether started.
Tether is a preventive health intelligence company for dogs. We built a wearable called the Ruff that monitors a dog's vitals, movement, and behavior in the background and surfaces patterns related to pain. Dogs hide pain and decline, and most owners and vets only catch it once the underlying disease is already advanced. The Ruff detects pain, contextualizes it against the dog's own personal baseline, breed, age, and environment, then tells the owner and the vet what to do next. Recommendations, not raw numbers. That intelligence layer is something neither pet parents nor vets have ever had.
Other Interviews
More conversations with founders, operators, and investors building the future of pet care.
Alexandru Bacita | Co-Founder & COO, The Cat Health Company
Cats are living longer, but the drugs for age-related disease have not kept pace. The Cat Health Company, a clinical-stage biotech, has three drugs in trials and 11 more preclinical candidates, and has out-licensed its first therapeutic. Co-founder and COO Alexandru Bacita explains why cats compress the drug-development loop, how the company targets muscle loss and kidney disease first, and why the route to longevity runs through veterinarians and pharma partners.
Elias Weiss Friedman | Founder, The Dogist Company
Elias Weiss Friedman spent a decade turning street photography into The Dogist, one of the largest dog-focused audiences online. Now he's testing whether that trust extends to physical products, starting with Vitality, a vet-formulated antioxidant chew built with Dr. Angela Rollins. He talks about the discipline of brand extension, the operational learning curve of a first physical product, and what a decade of stopping strangers on the street taught him about people, not just dogs.
Sarah McLean | Co-Founder & CEO, Big Damn Dog Co.
A joint supplement label that stopped at 60 pounds sent Sarah McLean looking for a product that did not exist. Big Damn Dog Co. is the bootstrapped answer: giant-breed formulations, dosing built for 120-pound dogs, and a customer list the founders still call by phone. Six months after launch, its Gravy Blend already accounts for roughly 40% of joint supplement sales.