Pet surveillance using pet wearables .

Owning a dog comes with responsibilities aside from health and wellness,behavioral patterns need to be monitored and corrected where adjustments are indicated. Wondering how to check up on your pets when out of your zone? then read on... There are pet apps and devices that allow you to keep tabs on your pets ,monitor and even interact virtually when you are out of the house. Whistle, is one of such devices and according to the website, the device uses a combination of GPS tracking and pet wellness in one band. When attached to a dogs collar, it connects to a smartphone app that allows tracking and evaluation of the dogs exercise, play and rest in real time. Whistle is part of the ever growing pet wearable market that is changing the paradigm in pet health and wellness. Pet wearable devices enable surveillance and tracking through devices such as Pod 2, Buddy, WÜF and Nuzzle; monitoring of heart-rate and sleep patterns (Inupathy, PetPace) and may feature geofencing capability and virtual boundary alert systems that let owners know when their pet wanders too far (eg DogTelligent). Pet wearables and monitoring systems are also implicated in an ethics of care and surveillance. They originate from a genealogy of care that engages paradoxical notions of constraint and guardianship. Indeed, our relationship with domestic animals is often fraught with ambiguity; pets are both nature and culture, instinctual and social, controlled yet nurtured, at the same time possessions and companions. Pet owners can "gamify" their pet's exercise with a reward system and leaderboard that ranks their results compared to other pets. They can download an augmented reality app that sees through obstacles such as furniture to locate their pet. Or they can record and vicariously experience their pet's perspective and movement remotely via wearable cameras. Get more here