Web Application
Demo of Chat Bot

Don't Stray Behind

Don't Stray Behind is a chat bot that helps users to find contact information of local animal shelters or hospitals near by that can help a stray animal (that are pets or injured animals) that they find with a simple text. A user can simply text "I found a lost cat" and is immediately connected with resources and information. Each time a user sends a text, the number of stray sightings will increment and contribute to data regarding the animal homelessness.

Inspiration

This app was inspired to help stray or homeless animals find shelter easily, which will also help them get adopted or receive medical attention as easy as sending a text. Sometimes 311 calls aren't helpful or quick, our chat bot helps alleviate time and give users ease of access to connect animals in need.

Stray animals ARE: • Street animals: Born and reproduce on the street, and have never been owned • Lost animals: Owned free-roaming animals that could not find their way home • Abandoned animals: Owned animals who are no longer wanted and left on the street to fend for themselves or taken to a shelter by their owner (which can be more likely in major cities)

Stray animals ARE NOT: • Wild animals: Stray animals, wherever they live, remain domestic animals

Which leads to: • Animals on the street and uncontrolled breeding amongst street animals resulting in the second, third generation, etc. of street animals Perpetuated by: • Uncontrolled breeding of free roaming pet animals with street animals: because owners either do not have the funds or inclination to neuter their pets Which leads to: • Large and growing stray dog populations and human/animal conflict issues

https://www.animalwelfareintergroup.eu/old/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/James-Pirnay.pdf

How it is built

The chat bot was implemented using Twilio's API and Python Flask and Google Maps API The website was built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript It is hosted on Domain.com Also hosted on Heroku for continued flask run

Challenges Faced

Dynamically updating the count with Python. We wanted to track the number of times a user spots a stray animal sighting via text, but were unable to implement this. Training the chat bot to be more reliable. Getting different map data for each user based on location, unfortunately we weren't able to implement this.