petvet profile
Dr. Cindy Bressler typography
Dr. Cindy Bressler holding a small dog
By Rebecca Shipman
Photos provided by Dr. Cindy Bressler and Proto
“P

roto presents people, or animals, in volumetric 4K. When a person beams somewhere live, they can see and hear the people they are interacting with in real time,” explains David Nussbaum, CEO and Inventor of Proto Hologram. “When Dr. Bressler interacts with a client and their pet, it’s exactly as if the pet is in the room with her.

Harnessing Hologram Technology to Revolutionize Pet Health Care typography; dog laying on its stomach looking up
Dr. Cindy Bressler holding a small dog
Harnessing Hologram Technology to Revolutionize Pet Health Care typography; dog laying on its stomach looking up
By Rebecca Shipman
Photos provided by Dr. Cindy Bressler and Proto
“P

roto presents people, or animals, in volumetric 4K. When a person beams somewhere live, they can see and hear the people they are interacting with in real time,” explains David Nussbaum, CEO and Inventor of Proto Hologram. “When Dr. Bressler interacts with a client and their pet, it’s exactly as if the pet is in the room with her.

“We’ve been working in healthcare with humans, and the Bronx Zoo has used Proto to show holograms of sloths, foxes, boars and more,” continues David. “But Dr. Bressler is the first to use it in veterinary care and we’re so excited about this.”

As owner of House Call Veterinarian in New York City and the preferred vet of many pet-owning celebrities in the Hamptons, Dr. Cindy Bressler was determined to find a faster and more accurate way to help pets when seconds count.

“We’d ask people to send photos or videos so we could see what was going on,” Dr. Bressler explains, “And then I realized when I’d see the animal in person, it would be a much different situation than I thought. I was worried the info I was working with when people would send stuff in wasn’t accurate enough.

“Now with Proto,” she continues “I can get a much more real view of what’s going on. It’s not just a close-up of a bump or wound; it’s how the pet is moving and interacting with its owner. I’ll tell the client to have the pet walk to them, or show me how he is breathing, or how he reacts to you touching his paw. With holograms I can see so much more. This is hugely important when someone can’t get into the office soon enough or we can’t get to them.”

I can get a much more real view of what’s going on. It’s not just a close-up of a bump or wound; it’s how the pet is moving and interacting with its owner.
– Dr. Cindy Bressler
digital illustration of a dog in a lab
To use this feature, clients follow a few simple instructions and use the Proto Beam app on their smartphone to send the hologram to Dr. Bessler.

“Proto is great for things like re-checks—say a dog has orthopedic surgery—a week later, two weeks later, you can monitor it,” she says. “You can gain so much from seeing how they’re moving, how much weight they put on their leg, and things like that.

“Another area is neurological situations, which are very hard for a client to explain on the phone,” Dr. Bressler continues. “Not everything is cut and dry like a full-blown seizure. A dog could be licking the air, or what we call fly-biting, and other things that are hard to describe. With Proto, you can capture behaviors much more accurately than people can describe.”

Dr. Bressler did her internship and residency in small animal internal medicine at the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan, but says she will see any animal in an emergency.

human in a Proto with their dog
human in a Proto with their dog
“I won’t turn any animal away,” she states. “Treating some large animals, like horses, can be more complicated, but the same life-saving methods can apply to any animal.”

This commitment was sparked at a very young age when Dr. Bressler took her sick childhood pet gerbil to the vet.

“The vet said, ‘I don’t treat gerbils,’” she recalls. “And I said, ‘You’re an animal doctor, you should treat all animals.’ I took her home and she died the next day. So I knew I wanted to be a vet and that when I became one, I would always take care of all animals.”

Dr. Bressler spent much of her free time volunteering at local veterinary hospitals, but when she found out that to apply to vet school you have to have worked on a farm or with zoo animals too, she began volunteering at the Staten Island Zoo and working with other large animal vets to get that experience.

“When I was at Ithaca College, I’d get up at 4 a.m. to work with a large animal vet who was also married to an Australian sheep farmer, so I had both kinds of experience there,” she says.

From there, Dr. Bressler went to Atlantic Veterinary College on Prince Edward Island, which was a brand-new school in 1990.

“It was small so we got a ton of individualized attention,” she explains. “And I was happy to have peers working hard, with the same interests as me, for the first time in my life there.”

Now a typical day for Dr. Bressler begins around 7 a.m. when the phone starts ringing, and often lasts late into the night with so many emergencies to respond to.

Proto is great for things like re-checks—say a dog has orthopedic surgery—a week later, two weeks later, you can monitor it. You can gain so much from seeing how they’re moving, how much weight they put on their leg, and things like that.
– Dr. Cindy Bressler
“We travel to different patients’ homes in the Hamptons on Long Island; wherever we need to go,” she says. “Last night we got a call for a dog who swallowed a peach pit, so we met at a beach parking lot. It was an easy case.”

In an effort to save even more pets’ lives, Dr. Bressler is working on opening the first-ever 24-hour emergency vet hospital in Watermill, NY, which will service the South Fork of Long Island.

“Currently the closest emergency hospital is an hour away, and a lot of pets don’t make it,” she shares.

Dr. Bressler’s patient care doesn’t stop at just handing emergencies. With help from colleagues around the country, she’s dedicated to making sure her patients receive top-notch care, no matter where they are.

dog in a Proto machine
“One thing we did is we started a company called Jet Set Pets,” she explains. “We can travel with families when they need veterinary care—continue their treatment on a plane, for example—and then transfer care in our network so they keep the same level of care, whether they’re travelling between New York and L.A., Miami, Aspen, or even London.”

Another unique service that Dr. Bressler and her team offer is in-home hospitalization. If a pet is non-critical and it’s appropriate for the situation, they essentially set up a 24/7-care hospital in the client’s home, complete with nurses, equipment and specialists.

“A pet can feel so much better surrounded by their own home and everyday life instead of the stress of being in a cage,” she says. “We can provide the same care with undivided, personalized attention and all that TLC that being at home offers.”

She’s also done what she calls “Vet Sitting”—similar to pet sitting—where she’ll have a pet in her home to get to know them better before seeing them in the office.

“They’re so much more comfortable with me when they do come visit at the office,” Dr. Bressler explains. “And I learn so much about them, from the way they look at you, cuddle up to you, how they greet you at the door, or the way they know what you’re feeling.”

Wellness and longevity are other areas in pet health that are an important focus of Dr. Bressler’s. Through seeing what people do with human healthcare, she’s interested in how that can apply to pets to keep them feeling better longer, and is even currently working on a dog aging study.

When a pet’s life does sadly come to an end, there’s another use case of Pronto that’s different from diagnosis and care. In addition to recording holograms for symptom and recovery monitoring, anything a pet owner wants to capture can be recorded to keep the pet’s memory alive forever.

“You can record all these little things that only your pet does in its own way and a hologram really preserves it,” Dr. Bressler explains. “People love their animals so much—the grief process is very hard—so this is a new way to help with that loss.”

With a promise to herself at a very young age to help all animals, Dr. Cindy Bressler has certainly stuck to her commitment. And with the help of the innovative hologram technology available through Proto, and her unique, personalized ways of providing care, Dr. Bressler can help even more pets live longer, healthier lives.