Global Pet Expo

Melinda Thomas is the executive director of the Pet Care Trust and the Pets in the Classroom Program, an organization that provides grants and resources to help teachers bring classroom pets into schools across America, from fish to and guinea pigs to reptiles and rabbits, these classroom companions are helping students build responsibility, empathy, confidence, and a lifelong love of animals.

You may have also recently seen Melinda and Pets in the Classroom featured in Dog TV's new documentary series, The Pet Innovation Lab, filmed at Global Pet Expo, where the organization shared its mission of bringing the benefits of pets to even more students nationwide.

Melinda, welcome back to the show.

Thank

I think if you walk down the street and you go in a coffee shop and, and you talk to an adult, there's probably a classroom pet that they can remember might not,

That is amazing.

Well, we recently got to see Pets in the Classroom featured in the Pet Innovation Lab, which happened at Global Pet Expo.

You shared your mission with a wider audience and collaborated with so many other organizations and people.

And they're taking all that and it gets turned into these horse biscuits.

This company also claimed a second prize showing at Global Pet Expo's Best in Show Awards for the sustainability category.

So they are well recognized for this product being incredibly sustainable, good for your horses, packed with nutritional value and came recommended from some folks that I was speaking with.

So definitely feel free to check it out.

So I would say in 2023 and 2024, the-- I told you earlier there are two major trade shows.

There are Global Pet Expo and SuperZoo.

And I would say...

So Global Pet Expo is in March and SuperZoo is in August.

Mm-hmm.

And I would say eight to 10 weeks before each show, I'd hit a point where I was, like, on the fence about throwing in the towel.

Yeah, absolutely.

It was extremely exciting for us to win the Pet Care Innovation Prize this year at Global Pet Expo.

There were, I'm not sure how it was when you competed for that, but they had over 300 applicants internationally and they funneled that down to 30 and then to 10 and five finalists.

So we met those five finalists.

We had some really wonderful conversations with the C-suite at Purina, behaviorists, vets.

The access was awesome, and they're so supportive over there.

And then at Global Pet Expo in front of a live audience, we had a pitch competition between those five finalists.

Each of those companies from the 2026 year are incredible and they're doing amazing things.

Like, we have a lot of distributors, like indi- like s- that sell to individual pet stores.

But, um, we go to Global Pet Expo, have you heard of that?

Yeah.

At SuperZoo.

We got third place in the world for new dog product.

No, it's a very-

At, at Global Pet Expo

... interesting idea.