Smart Pet Products That Started as Luxuries but Became Essentials

Once upon a time, a standard pet owner needed only three things to provide basic needs for their pets: one food bowl, one leash made of nylon, and one box containing clay-based gravel to clean up after their pet's waste. Many pet owners of the past would have considered the potential cost of inputting their dog's daily exercise steps into a smartphone app or watching their cat use a robotic self-sanitizing litter box as a preposterous waste of money. Near the end of 2018, however, these types of technologies/products became mainstream with increased popularity among all pet owners of most walks of life. The introduction of higher-quality engineered pet-safety materials, hyper-connected devices to help pet owners manage pet health and wellness electronically, and advances in veterinary medicine technology are creating a paradigm shift in the way that manufacturers (both consumers and companies) think about providing basic care for pets.

An increasing number of technology-driven pet products have been integrated into our homes as essential items over the past several years. Pet owners' view of their dogs and cats has also changed dramatically. No longer seen as just casual companions, pets have now become integral parts of their families, and as such, they must be actively taken care of in terms of their health, emotional well-being, and safety. Because of the increasing demands on today's workers' schedules and the resulting time away from their homes, there is a growing demand for reliable, automated means of connecting with their animals when they are away. Examining the development of smart technology products for our pets provides insight into how the luxury brands of smart technology have now become an entirely different standard to which all conscientious pet owners now aspire to provide their pets with the best possible care.

Continuous Security Through Wearable Tracking

Pet tracking collars of the past were huge, heavy, expensive, and very unreliable. They were mostly used for hunting hounds or high-end working animals. The average dog owner would not likely be able to afford the monthly cost of the subscription to use the collars or the weight of the batteries that would allow tracking their pets lying on the living room floor all day. The advancement of wireless technology today has made it possible to develop sleek, lightweight pet wearables for everyday use.

Today's smart collar not only provides location coordinates when a pet is lost, but it also does so by providing continuous health monitoring for a pet's resting heart rate, breathing, rate of scratching, and sleep quality for identifying health concerns much sooner than waiting for a physical health issue. If a pet gets out of the backyard, this system allows the owner to receive a geofence alert on their smartphone immediately, allowing them to use satellite navigation to locate their pet, versus the old way of panicking and recruiting neighborhood volunteers to search for their pet.

Bridging the Distance with Interactive Sight

When leaving a pet at home alone, pet owners often feel guilty and have no idea what their pets are doing while they are away. Previously, monitoring our homes from outside was done using expensive, complicated security systems that were limited in use due to the grainy "video" they provided of only one room in the house, with little to no interaction with the animal. Since then, there have been large increases in both pet-specific optical hardware and home camera systems that allow pet owners to interact with their pets through live video feed.

Professional pet owners who are busy with work and family can take the anxiety out of leaving their pet alone by utilizing today's technology with smart pet cameras. The majority of smart home cameras specifically designed for pets now provide high-definition video and advanced two-way audio systems, motion-sensitive bark alerts, RTs, and remote treat dispensers. All of these features make it possible to have interactive play sessions with your pet during a long afternoon of waiting for their owner to return home. A person may also be able to check on their pet during their lunch break to provide encouragement verbally to their distressed puppy, prevent any destructive chewing before their new sofa is totally ruined, and even collect objective and credible data to determine how their pet is behaving while being left totally alone.

Precision Nutrition and Automated Portion Control

Historically, there has been a major flaw in how people have raised their pets—this is especially evident with the current epidemic of fat pets and metabolic disease due to there being no traditional way to measure how much food a pet consumes. Electronic feeders were often viewed as a lazy way for pet owners not to have to wake up during the weekends; however, they've become advanced technologies that enhance an animal's overall health and wellness.

Smart feedersallow pet owners to be in control of the total caloric intake for the pet by providing an accurate and pre-programmed amount of food at periodic intervals throughout the day. The use of a microchip scanner on high-tech feeders will only open the lid of the feeder at the times when the right pet is scheduled to be fed.

Automating the Ultimate Household Chore

That said, out of all responsibilities when owning a cat, cleaning out cat litter boxes is the most tedious and unpleasant job to do by far. There have been many options available to clean cat litter boxes for many years: hand scooping, using open litter box units with a plastic tray, and the constant battle of dust and odors coming out from the litter box due to all that dust becoming tracked into your home. The introduction of large motorized self-cleaning litter boxes to the consumer market was met with ridicule due to their expense and the misconception that they were a status symbol for people who couldn't bear cleaning up after their pet through regular house cleaning.

The robotic, self-cleaning litter boxes we have today are revolutionary for your cat's health & cleanliness in your home! Your cat has a great sense of smell and will not use a dirty litter box (even if it's just been used once); hence, they will find places around your home to hide when there are accidents, and they may develop behavioral problems because of the stress this causes them.

These new boxes utilize a unique combination of weight sensors and a system of infrared beams to know exactly when your cat leaves the box, and will then swivel very fast to push all waste into a sealed drawer that has a carbon filter to eliminate odor. Constantly refreshing the litter will keep your home free of odor, significantly reducing your risk from airborne diseases, and will ensure your feline has access to a clean, odor-free, and stress-free environment.