Why has your dog been aggressive for several days? Why does he start wagging his tail frantically or licking his nose? And is he just happy, anxious or sad? So many questions that every owner has asked themselves one day when observing their animal. But unless you have a veterinarian, an educator or a dog behaviorist around you, it’s not easy to know what’s on your dog’s mind and what emotion he’s feeling. Many are tempted to look for the answer on the Internet. But like on health forums, everything and its opposite are sometimes said and also a lot of nonsense delivered by pseudo-experts.
To help owners decode their dog’s behavior, Emilie Nouveau and Vincent Coupeaux, two friends from Rennes sharing the same passion for animals, have developed a mobile application, called NeoVoice, which they will present all week at CES in Las Vegas . As often, the idea for this start-up, launched in June 2022, comes from a personal experience lived by Émilie Nouveau in spring 2020. While France was confined, the thirty-year-old saw the behavior of her dog Réglisse, a Czechoslovakian wolfdog cross Labrador, change suddenly. “He became very aggressive and he wouldn’t stop growling,” says the young woman, who consulted, without much success, a veterinarian and an animal behaviorist. It was only three months later that the diagnosis finally came, his animal suffering from an inflammation of the pancreas which now required him to be treated for life. “We thought he was suffering from behavioral problems, but he ultimately expressed his pain by growling,” she notes.
The animal’s posture and its facial expressions deciphered
An engineer in agronomy and specialized in animal nutrition, the woman who dreamed of becoming a veterinarian then imagined with Vincent Coupeaux, who is rather computer-savvy, a tool to assess the well-being of her animal. For this, they relied on the expertise of the National Veterinary School of Alfort with whom they established a partnership. In the first version of their application, available for download for a few days, dog owners can post photos of their animal in various situations. Using artificial intelligence, the NeoVoice application will then analyze the animal’s posture and facial expressions. And ultimately determine if he is happy, stressed, excited or angry. “This does not provide a medical diagnosis, and we are in no way replacing a professional,” assures Vincent Coupeaux. However, this provides information on the well-being of your animal. »
In the coming months, the application will be enriched with the possibility of publishing videos and detecting pain in your animal. NeoVoice also aims to be a bridge between individuals and professionals. “We want to facilitate exchanges but also for the application to eventually become the animal’s digital health record with its vaccination record and details of all interventions,” develops Emilie Nouveau.
A pro version of the application is also available to help animal professionals in their daily lives such as making appointments or managing their clients. “Osteopaths or animal behaviorists are often in the field and do not necessarily have an office, so they need a tool to make all these tasks easier for them,” underlines Vincent Coupeaux, who also hopes to take advantage of his trip to Vegas to explore the North American market. And perhaps soon set out to conquer it.