Pet Industry News
The deals, launches, and strategic moves behind the brands and operators shaping the industry.
Pets will shape travel plans for 68% of owners, Subaru survey finds
A Subaru-commissioned Talker Research survey of 2,000 pet-owning drivers, released October 13th, 2026, says 68% expect their pet to affect travel plans this year and 73% would drive instead of fly to bring the pet. New in this release, 10% may host, 10% may shorten a trip and 8% may skip gatherings. In our view, the trip-length and planning numbers are the ones sitters and kennels can use.
Pet Care's Loyal Customers Hide a Harder Truth: Owners Aren't Paying Themselves
A new benchmarking survey of 457 pet care operators shows a segment with loyal customers and steady growth but chronic under-monetization, low occupancy, thin upsells, and owners who often aren't paying themselves. The "room to scale" story is also a survival story.
Fi Puts Its Dog Tracker on Starlink Satellites, Betting Connectivity Is the Moat
Fi launched Ultra, the first consumer dog tracker on T-Satellite with Starlink, keeping dogs locatable past cellular range. The satellite feature is really a subscription play, and the Whistle shutdown shows the lock-in risk baked into pet-wearable memberships.
A supplement brand bets that cat compliance is a format problem, not a formula one
Pet Honesty launched Cat Squeezables, eight lickable purée supplements for cats, live on DTC, Amazon, and Chewy now and reaching Petco in August. The actives are commodity; the bet is that the lickable format cats already love solves the supplement-compliance problem that caps the category.
A Dog Blood Test That Reads Several Diseases at Once, Without a Sequencer
LatusPet, an Oxford biotech startup, published peer-reviewed evidence that its metabolomics-and-AI platform screens dogs for cancer and cardiovascular disease from a single blood sample. Unlike PetDx's sequencing-based cancer test, it needs no sequencer and reads multiple conditions at once. The science is proven; distribution, owned by IDEXX and the diagnostic incumbents, is the real hurdle.
Unicharm Enters India Leading With Litter, Not Food
Unicharm is opening its India pet care business with cat litter and toiletries rather than premium food, riding baby-care and feminine-care distribution it already owns in-country. The sequencing is the lesson: a market entry is a distribution problem before it is a product problem, and diversified CPG giants can enter pet sideways at scale.
Product marked for destruction ended up back on shelves
Mars recalled two lots of Pedigree wet dog food it had already condemned and sent for destruction, after the cans were diverted to U.S. shelves. The operator lesson is the unaudited disposal chain.