Pet tech: Spotify's new puppy podcasts and Fitbits for dogs, it's time to pupgrade your gear

All the tech you need to delight your dogs 
The Tractive gadget uses GPS to track your dop in live time
Paul Trainer/Tractive

The secret to your dog barking less, sleeping more and keeping calm while you’re out at work? Put on a podcast, says Spotify.

The music-streaming service might seem an unlikely mentor for pet advice but it turns out you can teach an old app new tricks. Spotify has spent the last 12 months working with animal experts and pet psychologists to develop what it says is the ultimate playlist for your furry friend: five hours of dog-directed praise, stories, affirmation messages and reassurance, underscored by music and ambient sounds from park noise to wind rustling in trees.

“These ambient sounds are designed to help mask startling sounds of the outside world such as traffic, car doors slamming or the bins being emptied,” says pet psychologist Alex Benjamin, who helped develop My Dog’s Favourite Podcast. According to the app’s research, nearly three-quarters of UK pet owners believe music helps soothe and calm their pets at home.

The podcast is designed to be a pre-prepared soundtrack to keep your dog company while you’re out. Spotify found that 60 per cent of pet owners have witnessed their dogs taking notice of famous voices, so Game of Thrones actor Ralph Ineson and Call the Midwife’s Jessica Raine are among the narrators, and award-winning composer Daniel Knight wrote the score.

The site also launched pet playlists this week if your dog prefers a bit of Lizzo — and each one is personal. Just input your pet type (iguanas included), their energy-level and friendliness on a scale and Spotify’s algorithm will curate a bespoke playlist of 30 tracks based on their characteristics: upbeat pop for lively labradors; slower tempos for shy cats. Rover will never want to leave the house again.

Spotify isn’t the only tech giant on a mission to smarten up our relationship with our four-legged friends. Carmaker Ford recently applied its noise-cancelling technology to a dog kennel to reduce the sound of fireworks (it’s just a prototype at this stage) and Amazon is working on a pet collar add-on called Ring Fetch that’ll let owners geo-fence their pet and get an alert when they breach it. No more escaping onto a busy road.

Sure Petcare's Animo device is essentially a FitBit for dogs (Sure Petcaare )
Sure Petcaare

Pet tech was big business at last week’s Las Vegas tech trade show, CES, too, from self-cleaning litter boxes to robot pet feeders. Austria-based Tractive uses GPS to track your dog in live time (£44.99, tractive.com); Sure Petcare has a smart cat flap with facial recognition; and the company’s new Animo device is essentially a FitBit for dogs (£65, surepetcare.com).

The behaviour monitor records exercise, sleep behaviour and calorie consumption and sends all the data to your phone — a smart way to make sure you don’t feed Doggo twice.

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