Don’t leave your precious Fido or Fluffy stuck in the Stone Age. High-tech gadgets can help supply some of the basics for your pet cat or dog.
For instance, a web-connected collar with GPS can help you find your lost dog without having to go knocking on neighbors’ doors. And a portable vacuum may be a lot more convenient than dunking him in the tub.
Here’s a roundup of some of the most interesting technology for your beloved pet dog or cat.
Pet tags of the future
Traditional plastic or metal pet tags are functional enough for providing a pet’s name and its owner’s phone number. Pawscout’s web-connected tag takes the idea to a super-connected level.
The tag, which costs $20, connects to a corresponding smartphone app to let people track their pets within a 300-foot radius on a digital map. If a dog ventures outside that range, the app notifies the owner that the canine is too far away.
But even then, the dog can still be found, in theory, using a work around. If a lost dog happens to walk near people who have the Pawscout app installed on their smartphones, the owner of the lost dog will get an alert about its location.
To buy the Pawscount, click here
A Fitbit for your pet
The StarWalk Dog Activity Tracker by Dogtra iQPet is essentially a small Fitbit-like gadget that attatches to your dog’s collar. The tracker is supposed to help dog owners monitor their dog’s health by recording how many steps it took in a day as well as the calories it burned.
It’s no substitute for a trip to the vet for health check up, but for $50, pet owners can glean some interesting data like the temperature of body temperature and how many hours their dog was most active in a day.
To buy the StarWalk Dog Activity Tracker, click here
Dog tracker and Fitness tracker combined
The LINK AKC Internet-connected collar is more expensive than both the Pawscout and StarWalk activity tracker, but it’s essentially the two products combined into what looks like a traditional leather collar.
Like the other devices, the LINK collar works with a smartphone app and logs doggy data like the canine’s location through GPS and the temperature where the dog may be hanging out. LINK managed to sneak in a tech buzzword du jour—artificial intelligence—in its marketing materials, saying that its propriety algorithms help learn “what constitutes intense activity for your dog so you can make sure your dog gets enough active minutes each day.”
The collar costs $100 plus a monthly $10 fee, although that fee is slightly discounted if its part of a one or two-year plan.
To buy the Link AKC Internet-connected collar, click here