Muurla Design Marketing continues its long-term support for DogRisk research group, which studies the use of scent dogs in detecting diseases and the nutritional, genetic and environmental factors that predispose dogs to diseases. The donations enable DogLab's activities, where scent dogs are trained.
For every product sold in Muurla's Moomin for Pets collection, a portion is donated to the DogRisk research. Since 2022, DogRisk has already received 80,000 euros in donated support.
"We had agreed together with Moomin Characters that when Moomin illustrations are used for the first time in products for pets, a part of the sales revenue should be donated to some non-profit cause. It was Moomin Characters who suggested the DogRisk research", says Hanne Heino, Product and Procurement Manager at Muurla Design Marketing.
"At Muurla, we are all animal-loving people, and when we heard about DogRisk's groundbreaking research projects related to dog health, we definitely wanted to get involved in funding their research and ensuring that their important work can continue", Heino continues.
DogLab research and trains scent dogs
Senior Clinical Teacher Anna Hielm-Björkman from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Helsinki and her research group have trained dogs to recognise COVID disease and different types of chronic pain in humans. Dogs are currently being studied and trained to recognise breast cancer in other dogs. For pain dogs, Hielm-Björkman's group collaborates with Orton Hospital, which focuses on pain management. Dogs learn to recognize different types of pain from human sweat samples and can then warn the patients before pain attacks begin. This way, dogs can help people take the right kind of medicine to prevent pain attacks, which improves patients' quality of life.
"Without Muurla's support, we would not be able to maintain DogLab's operations. The donations are very meaningful to us, and we are very thankful", Hielm-Björkman says.
Currently, there are 12 pain dogs, two of which work in hospitals and ten as assistance dogs for pain patients.
Next, DogLab aims to find out how quickly scent dogs can be retrained to identify a new disease. The need to identify new diseases can arise quickly, as the coronavirus pandemic taught us. In 2020, Hielm-Björkman's group trained dogs to recognize COVID disease, and in autumn 2020, trained dogs were used to screen people at Helsinki Airport.
"It has been very meaningful for us to be involved in supporting Finnish research. It has been great to see and hear how concretely the donations have affected DogRisk's operating possibilities. It has also been very interesting to get to know DogRisk's work, for example the training of pain dogs and what kind of results can be achieved with such training, to the concrete help that a pain dog can bring to the life of a person suffering from a chronic pain disorder", Heino says.
Moomin for Pets anniversary collection continues the donation tradition
The year 2025 is the Moomins' jubilee year, as it has been 80 years since Tove Jansson's first Moomin story was published. The first anniversary products for humans were launched in autumn 2024, and during spring 2025 the anniversary collection will also be launched on the pet side. Designer Kata Nowak-Kiminki has created a collection of original Moomin illustrations.
Muurla Design Marketing donates 5 percent of the invoiced wholesale sales of Moomin for Pets products to DogRisk. Muurla has distributors in about 20 countries. The largest retailer of these products is the Finnish Musti Group, which has stores in Finland, Sweden and Norway, as well as online. Muurla also has its own store and online store. Muurla donates 2.7 percent of direct consumer sales to DogRisk.
