BarkBox in New York launched its website today ready to ship monthly boxes of new toys and treats to dog lovers who want to pamper their four-legged companions. Co-founder Carly Strife says subscribers will receive, for a fee, well-designed, curated products chosen by BarkBox.

Though not affiliated with cosmetics sample service Birchbox, also in New York, BarkBox has adopted a comparable subscription-based strategy. “This is a hot new business model that we wanted to replicate in a way that we’re passionate about,” Strife says.

Strife says she and co-founder Matt Meeker, who also co-founded Meetup.com, are both crazy about dogs. Henrik Werdlin, managing partner of product incubator Prehype and previously entrepreneur in residence at Index Ventures, is also a co-founder of BarkBox. Strife says she handled much of the business operations prior to the launch and expects Meeker and Werdlin will become more involved now that BarkBox is up and running.

BarkBox has not sought outside funding at this point, though it remains open to the possibility in the future for marketing purposes or to offer something extra to subscribers. “If we can bootstrap in a way that allows us to be efficient, I think we’ll go that route,” she says.

Strife, who owns a puggle (a crossbreed of a beagle and a pug)  and a pit bull, is currently the New York operations manager for San Francisco-based Uber, a startup that created an app that connects passengers with on-demand car service. She began talking with Meeker and Werdlin in September about forming BarkBox. Strife says she plans to finish up her duties at Uber to concentrate on BarkBox.

For $25 per month, each subscriber to BarkBox will receive a box loaded with four to five items, including one special featured big-ticket product, chosen by the company. “We ask you the size range of your dog and try to customize it,” Strife says. “Other than that, everyone will receive the same box.”

Strife says $3 from every box sold will be donated to local animal shelters or rescue operations selected by BarkBox. Subscribers can also suggest who receives such donations.

Each BarkBox will include a mix of items such as treats and bones, as well as gadgets such as collar-mounted webcams. “Anything that allows you to engage with your animal and makes your dog happy,” Strife says. She says consumers might spend about the same amount as their monthly subscription on one item, if they purchased it separately on their own. BarkBox subscribers will also be eligible for promotional codes they can use when shopping at vendors’ websites.

Strife would not disclose who BarkBox’s product suppliers are, but she says about 75 percent are smaller brands that do not have as much reach as her company. “Through our partnerships we are able to get cool and innovative items that people don’t know about,” she says. “It’s definitely not like getting a grab bag from a place like PetSmart.”

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As much as I hate clichés, I can’t resist using them to describe what’s been going on lately in the pet-products business. So here goes: It’s raining cats and dogs online, as Amazon’s Quidsi launches Wag.com and PetFlow.com brings in a round of funding. The fur is flying on Wall Street with news that Pfizer may shed its multibillion-dollar animal health business. And Say Media is purring over pet owners with its acquisition of the Dogster and Catster social-networking sites.

Okay, enough of that. Let’s get serious and face up to the fact that pets make for a market worth panting over (couldn’t resist one more)—both online and off. According to the American Pet Products Association, which surveys pet owners, we will spend a staggering $50 billion on our furry, feathered, and finned friends this year. And Forrester Research estimates that the online market for pet products will grow from $2.1 billion in 2010 to $3.7 billion in 2014.

Here are some more details on the pet-related news items that have recently caught Xconomy’s attention. Have I missed any? If so, please weigh in below.

On July 6, Jersey City, NJ-based Quidsi—which was bought by Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in November for $500 million—debuted Wag.com, a site offering 10,000 products for Fluffy and Fido (and my dog, Molly, pictured above). Despite Amazon’s failed attempt to crack the market in the early 2000s by investing in the doomed Pets.com, Quidsi’s execs are confident they can succeed in today’s online market for pet supplies. Part of the secret, they say, is a super-efficient distribution system that they’ve perfected with their other e-commerce sites, Diapers.com, Soap.com, and BeautyBar.com.

Also on July 6, New York-based PetFlow.com revealed that it raised $10 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company, which launched its site in 2010, raised $5 million in an earlier round, and hopes to stand out from the crowd by offering such features as automatic delivery of pet food.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) has been vowing to refocus its efforts on the high-margin biopharmaceutical market, and on July 7, it gave investors a taste of how it might do that. The New York-based company said it would explore options for its nutritional business and its animal-health unit, the latter of which makes a range of products for dogs, cats, and livestock. Those options might include selling or spinning off the businesses. Pfizer Animal Health brings in $3.6 billion in sales a year and could be a tasty acquisition target. But investors seemed unsure about the decision, pushing Pfizer’s shares down 2 percent to $20.33 in morning trading.

In April, San Francisco-based Say Media bought Dogster—which owns the Dogster and Catster social media sites for pet owners—for an undisclosed sum. Say Media’s executives say the sites fit its rapidly growing portfolio of properties that attract active and engaged audiences.

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[Corrected: 11:30 am] Little known fact: more than half of American pet owners now buy holiday presents for their pets. But even in a country where buying stocking stuffers for your four-legged pal is more than commonplace, the sale of medical insurance plans to protect pets—and their owners’ pocketbooks—from medical emergencies and other health related costs is surprisingly low, according to Seattle-based Trupanion founder and chief executive Darryl Rawlings. This is something he is hoping to change.

“For a lot of people, their pets really become part of the family,” he says. “So what do you do when that pet gets hurt, and you can’t afford to pay the medical costs?” Deciding between paying for your pet’s health needs, or paying your power bill, is one choice Rawlings says pet owners should never have to make.

That’s where Trupanion comes in. Founded in British Columbia in 1998 (under the name VetInsurance), Trupanion offers health insurance for dogs and cats, between eight weeks and 14yearsold. Each policy covers 90 percent of all veterinary costs beyond the basic examination fee, including diagnostic tests, surgeries, and medications, for the life of the pet.

Trupanion was doing well in Canada, where Rawlings says between three and four percent of pets are medically insured. “Pet health insurance is normal in many other countries,” he says. “In parts of Europe, over 50 percent of pets have insurance.” This isn’t so in the United States, however, where less than one percent of pet owners take out medical insurance policies for their pets—a market, he says, that has an obvious need.

“One in two households has a pet—that’s 176 million cats and dogs in North America. There are more cats and dogs in North America than there are people under 20,” he says. “The pet industry is larger than the music industry, the movie industry, and video game industry combined.”

Rawlings hopes to tap that need, and drive the number of people medically insuring their pets in the U.S. to 20 to 40 percent. And he’s off to a strong start.

Darryl Rawlings

Though Rawlings would not disclose the number of policies the company has sold to date, he did say that Trupanion is the “fastest growing [pet insurance company] in North America.”

The company issued its first policy in 2000. Four years later, Trupanion had already passed the profitability mark. Then, as the pet industry continued to grow, Trupanion started to think more about a serious U.S. expansion. In 2007, it snagged a $22 million financing round from local venture firm Maveron (followed up by an additional round in 2008), which coincided with the company’s relocation to Seattle. In the last year the company has grown from fewer than 50 employees, to 120. Rawlings expects that number to increase to between 180 and 200 by next year. The key to Trupanion’s success, he says, is not operating like a typical insurance company.

“You have car insurance because someone told you you had to. You don’t have to have pet insurance, so we have to be better than Gieco, we have to be better than Progressive,” he says. “And … Next Page »

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We spotted three New England startups today that have recently filed papers with the SEC to report new rounds of equity financing. Other than their common geographic ties to region, it’s tough to see any relationship among these firms. But here’s a brief synopsis of the deals and what each company does:

—Waltham, MA-based Affectiva reports it has raised $1.7 million of a planned $2 million round of equity financing. This spinout of the MIT Media Lab is developing a biosensor, called the “Q,” that is designed to “measure and communicate emotional arousal” of the person wearing it, according to the firm’s website. The company says that it grew out of a collaboration at MIT to find ways to help people with varying degrees of autism. Rosalind Picard, the director of the Affective Computing Research Group at MIT, is listed as a director and executive of the company. (These filings don’t list investors in the companies.)

—Meanwhile, Westford, MA-based Aylus Networks, previously backed by Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, reported raising $5.7 million out of a planned round of about $9.3 million. The company, formed in 2005 by wireless entrepreneur Shamim Naqvi, seeks to enable rich data communications such as video telephony, video blogging, video sharing, and social networking for mobile operators.

—Have you found yourself willing to shell out gobs of cash on your pet’s drugs? I have, and I’m sure many other people have, too. Putney, a Portland, ME-based provider of specialty drugs for the veterinary market, reports that it has raised $6.6 million of a proposed $6.8 million round of equity financing. The company—which was founded in 2006 by pharmaceutical entrepreneur and CEO Jean Hoffman—says that it plans to double the size of its staff, revenues, deals, and more in 2010. (I’ve got a guess as to how the new capital will be spent.)

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Seattle-based Pet Holdings, owners of I Can Has Cheezburger and other humor websites, has formed a partnership with Dogster, a San Francisco-based social networking site, whereby Dogster will sell ads for Pet Holdings’ animal-related sites. The news was reported by TechCrunch, which also notes that the Cheezburger network will hit one billion page views this week. Financial details weren’t given, but TechFlash reports it’s the first deal Pet Holdings has done with a premium ad network in a very specific niche. The deal makes sense, as Dogster will benefit from Pet Holdings’ greater traffic, and Pet Holdings will benefit from Dogster’s ad monetization expertise.

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Sadly, my old Roomba Red robot vacuum cleaner is now collecting dust—and not in the way it’s supposed to. Its rechargeable battery no longer recharges, and iRobot charges $70 for a replacement. I figure that’s money I might as well put toward a newer model. And now I’m sorely tempted: today Bedford, MA-based iRobot launched two new Roomba models designed especially for homes with hairy pets.

When my old Roomba was still kicking, it was a huge blessing, since I have a long-haired Australian Shepherd who sheds copiously. My only complaints about the device were that its dirt bin filled up with hair so fast, and that I had to pick dog hair out of the brushes after every outing. Cleaning the brushes was so time-consuming that it almost canceled out the convenience of having a robotic vacuum.

The new Roomba 532 features improvements intended to address those two issues. It has an additional “sweeper bin” that’s 3.5 times the size of the old vacuum bin, as well as an extra set of brushes and special cleaning tools for keeping the brushes hair-free. According to the company, the 532 also has “counter-rotating brushes” that “reach deep into carpets to pull out pet hair and dander.” I’m already salivating.

The new Roomba 562 has everything the 532 has, plus one more set of brushes, a more capacious battery, and an on-board scheduling feature, allowing owners to program the vacuum to sweep automatically up to seven times a week, returning to its home base to recharge when it’s done. The Roomba 532 goes for $349 and the 562 is priced at $399.

Of course, while many people buy Roombas to clean up after their pets, there’s another group of iRobot customers who buy them to entertain their pets. (John Landry, the former CTO of Lotus who’s now in the venture capital business, let slip after a recent Xconomy forum that he’s one of the latter.) So far, iRobot hasn’t come out with a robot tailored especially for the latter group—unless you count the ConnectR, a “virtual visiting” robot that the company is currently beta-testing with a limited group of users and that can be used, according to iRobot’s marketing materials, to “tell Fido he’s a ‘good boy’ even while you’re on vacation.”

The company did, however, bring out one more Roomba model today: the new $599 “Roomba 610 Professional Series” robot (pictured at left), designed to vacuum large areas like offices or retail spaces. It comes with interchangeable sweeper bins—so that you can swap a full one for an empty one without delaying the robot in its appointed rounds, apparently—and it’s capable of using up more of its battery power before automatically returning to its recharging station.

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