Health tracking for dogs is the wearable tech we didn't know we were waiting for
As if you needed another reason to feel guilty for not walking your dog enough.
This Kickstarter campaign is bringing wearable fitness trackers to man's best friend with the Waggit collar and app — essentially a Fitbit for dogs. Their basic philosophy is that your dog can't tell you when she's feeling off (and often will try to hide it because of her survival instincts) but technology can detect the invisible signs of illness or injury. Waggit claims to use location, activity, and health tracking to give you a holistic, day-to-day view of your best friend's wellbeing.
Waggit tracks your dog's vital signs of temperature, heart rate, and breathing rate and can learn her baseline resting state the longer she wears her Waggit collar. You can set up push notifications to tell you when her vitals stray outside of what's normal for your dog, so if her heart rate suddenly spikes you can go investigate. You'll also be able to show your vet exactly what's been going on if you do have to take her in.
According to the Kickstarter page, the Waggit thermometer tracks both her body temperature and ambient temperature so if there's a heat wave or a cold snap coming through, you'll know to bring her inside.
In addition to vital signs, Waggit tracks your dog's sleep, activity, and even her positioning. If she's suddenly avoiding laying on her right side it could be an early indication that she's in pain. If she's sleeping way more than normal or not sleeping through the night, it'll alert you as well.
You can also record what type of food you're feeding your dog and how much she's eating. The location and movement tracker will let you know if she should have more or less food based on her activity level. There's also an activity leaderboard in the app that shows which Waggit users are getting the most exercise.
Losing track of your dog can be traumatic and scary. Waggit can apparently pinpoint your dog (or at least the collar) on a map so if she's lost you can find exactly where she went. You can even set a virtual fence in the app to alert you any time she leaves that area.
In addition to all this data, meeting the stretch goal of $100,000 will add a training center in the app to support you as you train your pup. There's a speaker in the collar that will be able to play training commands from the app. As she gets better at her commands, your dog will earn achievements and badges, so you'll both get positive reinforcement. The Kickstarter is currently at more than $85,000 pledged, so it looks pretty likely that it'll get there.
You can pledge $189 or more to get Waggit at 33% off the retail price of $279. That'll also get you a six month subscription to the cellular service that enables the GPS tracker and remote updates (when not connected to wifi.) After that it'll be $4.95/month.
No, the collar won't let your dog talk to you, but it's as close as technology will get for now.
Topics Animals Fitness Trackers
According to twitter, Emily Heller is a fake geek girl and a SJW. If you ask her friends, she laughs too loud and cries at cute animal videos. Prior to Mashable, Emily wrote for CollegeHumor and Reductress and most recently worked at a very bro-y tech startup. She lives in Brooklyn with three dudes, a cat who acts like a dog and a dog who acts like a houseplant.
