First Cell Phone for Dogs

revelCyllufyalP writes "A company called PetsMobility has come out with PetCell, the first cell phone for dogs. The phone will allow users to call their dogs in case the dog gets away and also includes a GPS tracking device if the dog doesn't respond to the call. In addition, the PetCell will feature GeoFence, which will alert owners whenever their dogs wander outside a prescribed area. Will the PetCell actually prove useful to dog owners or is it just another cheap gimmick?"

Comments

Just in time for Christmas...

[boog3r]

another worthless widget to consume!

Please, go fulfill the American Dream (TM) and buy one today!

Sure...

[Nichotin]

Fine for those serious pet owners who would die if their pet ran away, but it will be a total mess if people just purchase these things and let their dogs run loose just because they can track them.

First cell phone for dogs

[pulaski]

I could be wrong but $350 to $400 doesn't sound too much like a cheap gimmick.

Re:I don't think it'll be cheap

[DrEldarion]

That's why I'm a cat person. Kitty goes out, Kitty comes back in. She ain't dumb, she knows where her food dish is.

Funnily, I've seen FAR more "lost cat" posters than "lost dog" posters.

For Dogs?

[ignoramus]

A thinly disguised means of putting a GPS leash on your kids... My guess is the pet angle just makes it look more friendly/gets more press, whereas the paranoid parent market will be the real revenue generator.

bleurk. Must be nice to be treated like a parolee by your parents... really inculcates that sense of responsibility. Ah well, you get the kids you deserve--and then we all deal with the consequences.

Re:For Dogs?

[Eivind]

And the strange thing is: there actually exists people who think stuff like this will actually help. It's bullshit.

If you do this to a kid, one of two things will happen:

• The kid accepts it (perhaps grudgingly) and bows down to an unreasonable invasion of privacy. You've now got a kid less prepared to stand up for its rigths. Unless you think the same kid will later grow up able to figth back when government wants to invade the same rigths with pretty much the same reasoning ("safety")
• Or the kid will outfox you. He'll give the handy to a friend who's attending school while himself/herself going to the beach. Or he'll announce he's going to do homework with a pal, then leave the phone-device there and head somewhere else. Or he'll find and use any of the other millions of ways of tricking a device like this. You've now established yourself as an enemy of the kid, someone who must be lied to, someone who doesn't rtust the kid and which the kid should therefore in return not trust.

I actually consider alternative 2 the best case scenario. But for the life of me I can't figure out why any parent (and I am one) should want either of these scenarios to come trough.

Re:For Dogs?

[Eli Gottlieb]

You're kidding us all, right? Those Anti-Drug commercials are complete bullshit, the best thing you can do for your child is to respect their rights. This, in turn, teaches them by example to respect the rights of others.

Oh, and there is that whole "government will do it" paranoia, but the vast majority of us feel that tracking your kids everywhere is dehumanizing.

Re:For Dogs?

[JesseMcDonald]

Wondering what they're doing is one thing. Spying on them is another. It's perfectly natural for parents to want to keep up on their kids' activities. However, removing what little autonomy kids have these days by constantly tracking their movements and actions is seriously detrimental to any child's development. The right way to go about this would be to cultivate a trust relationship with one's kids, so that when they say they're going to a friend's house you can take them at their word and not worry about what they might be doing instead. Kids don't always make the best decisions, but their choices are often quite rational given the limited information and experience that they possess. It is important to understand that trust implies more than just always telling the truth: kids need to know, from experience, that their parents are looking out for their best interests and not just settings limits arbitrarily. Answering the "why" questions is one part of this; letting them make mistakes occasionally is another. People learn best from their mistakes, and keeping kids out of (reasonable) trouble is an excellent way to ensure that they are unable to handle it later on.

Cell sounds like least useful of its features

[caenorhabditas]

The GPS and GeoFence features sound like they'd be much more useful to the pet owner than the cell phone capabilities. What, exactly, are pet owners going do tell their dog over the phone? "Sit?" "Stay?" And how will the dog respond to a disembodied voice that seems to be coming from behind its head?

That's why this seems like a giant gimmick to me. If it weren't a gimmick, and were actually useful, the designers would have ditched the cell phone capability as a very expensive add on and just marketed it based on the dog-tracking capabilities. This will probably be bought by those pathetic dog owners who make ridiculous outfits for their pets to wear and visit pet psychologists when Fido barks twice more this week than he did last week.

This won't work because...

[nuckfuts]

When you call a dog it comes to you because it hears your voice coming from the direction you want it to go. So how is the animal supposed to understand where you are calling it to when your voice is coming from a speaker beside its ear?

Can't wait for the law suit...

[syousef]

...when someone's dog is run over because their owner calls on one of these gadgets and the dog is distracted. I mean most humans would be confused if a voice started coming out of some place on their body. I can just picture one of my dogs cocking his head from side to side in confusion.