Your dog can't tell you when it's starting to feel a little under the weather. But thanks to a new canine-specific activity tracker, you can be alerted to important changes in your pet's behavior months or years before you'd normally observe the signs.
That's the idea behind Whistle, which can best be described as a FitBit for dogs. It's a lightweight wireless device, about the size of a quarter, that attaches to your canine's collar. It uses an accelerometer to record your dog's movements, then relays the collected data to apps (both web-based and iOS-native) that both you and your vet can access.
"A dog's number one indicator of health is his activity relative to his own baseline," says Whistle co-founder Ben Jacobs. By tracking that data over a period of months or years, dog owners can get a good idea of what their pet's baseline level is, and take appropriate measures when that changes.
Whistle's algorithms can tell the difference between when your dog is playing fetch or going for a walk, if it's sleeping soundly or waking and fidgeting. There will be spikes -- say when the dog walker comes to visit, or when you hit the park on a Saturday afternoon -- and regular lulls in activity you'll come to expect as you look over the graphs plotted in Whistle's smartly designed iOS app. But what Whistle measures specifically is your dog's "ambient activity" -- the periods of movement that are not human-initiated. This could be the dog's nighttime sleep patterns, or its behavior during the day while you're at work. If those levels start to change, the app will alert you that something's amiss, and that you may need to take a trip the vet.
For those who own a dog species prone to specific conditions as they age -- large dogs like Great Danes and German Shepherds, for example, are known to develop joint issues -- you can potentially identify these issues long before they get to the point where they'd require costly surgery, saving your dog from pain and you from exorbitant vet bills.
But the Whistle team hopes their sensor is as beneficial to veterinarians and researchers as it is to pet owners. At the moment, no solid data exists about how much exercise or rest a dog really needs on a day-to-day basis to maintain optimal health, Jacobs says, especially with regards to specific breeds and ages. It's just never been tracked on a large scale. If Whistle catches on, the hope is that it will eventually be able to amass a database of this information. The app will also provide vets with concrete data on how much exercise your pet is getting, so they'll know if Fido is obese because of a medical issue, or because you're just a lazy owner.
Whistle costs a very reasonable $100, which is the going price for most of the activity trackers aimed at humans. You can pre-order one at the company's website, and it'll ship this summer. And cat owners shouldn't fret -- a feline version is in the works for 2014.
