The ZenCrate Story

The Beginning 

I’m Jonathan Azevedo and in 2006 my best friend was in a terrible car accident which took his eyesight.  After searching many avenues to help the blind community, I came across a non-profit that specifically trained and donated Seeing Eye dogs to blind candidates.  After various interviews, I had a yellow Labrador puppy from California that went by the name Charger.   As Charger was nearing his 2 year graduation he had to drop out of the program due to his fear of thunderstorms.  I adopted Charger and tried to help him through his anxiety with essential oils, a restricting jacket, veterinarian prescribed medication, and every other option on the market, but nothing helped.  We live in Florida and during the summer months there’s a 20-minute thunderstorm almost every afternoon which would put him in a constant panic. Having a hard time continuing to see Charger so distressed and anxious during these thunderstorms I needed to explore more options.  In 2014, I decided to tackle Charger's anxiety myself.  I researched what causes anxiety in dogs, how dogs sense and feel things differently than we do, and how dogs naturally seek comfort during times of anxiety. After substantial research and testing I designed and built the first ZenCrate prototype.  The ZenCrate design was inspired by identifying and combining remedies to address the drivers of animal anxiety including, vibration isolation, noise cancellation, comfort, security, reduced light, and self-administration.

ZenCrate is Ready to Help Millions of Dogs With Anxiety

Charger instantly took to his new ZenCrate.  After our first Florida thunderstorm, and seeing how calmer Charger was inside the crate, it was clear the ZenCrate was a success and Charger’s fear was no more!  We helped Charger deal naturally with his anxiety, without drugs or a jacket.  But, what about the other 32 million dogs in the U.S. that also suffer from anxiety?  Why not try and help them also?  Our goal at ZenCrate is to spread the word and share with the dog and cat lovers that there is now a healthy and holistic solution for anxiety!