Log My Dog: Perceived Impact of Dog Activity Tracking

Abstract

The billion dollars' worth pet industry is catching up on the wearables market, as pet activity and location trackers are increasingly worn by our furry friends. Despite the growing body of work on user perceptions of human wearables, very few works have addressed canine activity trackers and their impact on pet owners' lifestyles and the human-animal bond. In this paper we report on an empirical study investigating perceptions of 81 users of a popular dog activity tracker. The results show that dog activity trackers are perceived to have positive impact on owners' motivation to increase their mutual physical activities with their dogs. The human-dog bond is perceived to be further reinforced by the use of activity trackers, increasing human awareness to animals' needs by giving them a "digital voice," and potentially improving the quality of human caregiving.

Pets without PETs: on pet owners’ under-estimation of privacy concerns in pet wearables

“…To mitigate this threat, we performed an additional study with 201 pet owners, asking them what, if any, reasons would make them not purchase (or stop using) a pet wearable. We presented participants with a number of reasons derived from requirements found in other work with pet wearable users [75] and asked them to elaborate on their choice(s). See Appendix A for the used questionnaire.…”

Analysis of Dogs’ Sleep Patterns Using Convolutional Neural Networks

“…While such devices can measure activity and sleep patterns, none of them has yet been scientifically validated, and thus are not always appropriate to be used in clinical and scientific settings. Wearables have been investigated in the context of predicting the success of future guide dogs ( [16,13]), impacting the bonding between dog and owner [17,18], and supporting the relationship between guide dog centers and puppy raisers ( [19]). van der Linden et al [20] provide a comprehensive overview of commercially available dog trackers, discussing also their privacy implications.…”

Interspecies information systems

“…[34,86,121]) and integrating them into development methods [101]. Yet, the design and use of an IIS may lead to unexpected real-world challenges that transcend beyond the individual people, animals, and technology they envelop, as existing research investigating the use of animal-centered technology has hinted at [102,103,122]. Dog activity trackers may indirectly capture unrelated bystanders' behavior, impacting on privacy, while industrial technology for farm animals may unintentionally reveal commercially sensitive information, and poorly designed wildlife technology may affect more ecosystems than envisioned and intended.…”