Vet Pets Magazine

January, 2015

The Rise of the Pet Child

TOP ARTIST REVEALS THE TRICKS OF HER TRADE

The Top Wearable Tech for Your Pet

Vet Pets Magazine

The fitness wearables

market has certainly taken

off in the last couple of

years. Wearable tech is

giving us the kind of

capabilities that used to be a thing of our imaginations

not too long ago. The

industry continues to be

innovative with the

introduction of pet wearables: it’s now our

pets’ turn to benefit from

the latest technology.

Experts at Wareable.com, the biggest site dedicated to all

things wearable and the

connected self, have put

together some of the most

exciting developments in

wearable technology for our

pets including GPS collars,

trackers and cameras.

We never want to lose our dog

so if this is something you’re worried about there are a wide

range of smart collars and

trackers emerging on the

wearable market to keep you

connected

to yours. Some

trackers also

have smart

features to

help keep your pet

healthy too.

Voyce is a

waterproof

smart collar that tracks your

dog’s activity and monitors it’s respiratory and heart rate, as

well as calories burnt and rest

patterns. You can also set

MARIE CARTER gets the lowdown on the latest wearable technology for pets - gadgets that look set to revolutionise the way we interact with our four-legged best friends.

TECH UP Your Pet!

Stay connected with the Whistle GPS

The Voyce smart collar

Vet Pets Magazine

specific goals including extra

activity, which is useful if the

vet has advised that your dog is

overweight.

Designed to keep you

connected to your dog, Voyce is

available in different sizes up to

a 32-inch neck. The cost of

Voyce is still to be confirmed

but you can find out more at

mydogsvoyce.com.

Currently available

in the U.S for

$49.95, the

StickNFind is a

stick on device that

can be used on anything you don’t

want to go missing,

including your pets!

The StickNFind is about the size of a

10p piece and comes

with a Virtual Leash function

that alerts you if your pet

moves away from a set

boundary. You can also use the

free Radar app to track down any missing pets.

StickNFind comes in packs of

two and works with iPhones,

iPads and some Android

phones. For more information

visit sticknfind.com.

The Tagg GPS Pet Tracker has live GPS

tracking and also tracks your

pet’s activity so you know it is getting enough exercise. Like

the StickNFind, the Tagg GPS

Pet Tracker enables you to set a

safe area for your pet

and you’ll get an alert should they go past

that area.

This collar-mounted

device also provides a map with driving

directions so if you

they do go missing you

can get straight to their

location as quickly as possible.

Currently available in

the U.S the Tagg costs $99.95

and has a monthly charge of $9.95 for Tagg service but you

can get two months for free at

pettracker.com.

Sleep soundly with the StickNFind

Tagg’s GPS Pet Tracker

Vet Pets Magazine

The man who designed the

Fitbit Flex (a fitness tracker for

humans) has also produced one

for pets called the

WhistleGPS - a collar-

mounted GPS tracker that

enables you to keep an eye on your pet’s movements and

activity levels via your

smartphone, which alerts you

to any changes. You can even

keep an eye on your pet if they’re staying with someone

else, including its activity.

WhistleGPS costs $129 and

there is a $5 monthly fee for

service location. Find out more at whistle.com.

Another pet tracker is the

Fitbark, which enables you

to track your pet and see if your

dog is at a similar level of

fitness and activity as other

dogs. This bone-shaped device

is really useful as it tells you if

there is something wrong via

your smartphone and if you

have to pay a visit to the vet you

can hand over the data to them.

Visit fitbark.com for more

information and to pre-order

for $69 (usual price $99).

If you want to keep an eye on

your dog’s actions, GoPro has

launched a wearable strap

called GoPro Fetch for its

action camera that can be worn

around your dog’s chest or on

its back. The harness is

designed to fit dogs between

7kg and 54kg and supports GoPro Hero cameras, which

The GoPro Fetch action camera

Fitbark

Vet Pets Magazine

are sold separately.

By attaching the camera you

can see your dog bone chewing

and digging and see overhead shots of your pooch running

and jumping.

The GoPro Fetch is machine

washable and rugged so you don’t have to worry about your

dog getting carried away in the

puddles. It costs just £59.99

from gopro.com.

If you want your dog to be able

to speak to you then No More Woof could be the

product for you.

Still a prototype, this device

combines ‘EEG-sensoring,

special BCI software reader and

Micro Computing’ to work out what your dog is thinking using

the onboard Raspberry PI

computer.

No More Woof connects

to your smartphone so

you can be updated on how

your dog is feeling with the goal

for this product being that eventually the collar will speak

the information to you via a

selection of voices that you can

choose.

You can keep an eye on all

things wearable at

www.wareable.com.

Speak to your dog with No More Woof

Vet Pets Magazine

The Era of the Pet Child

For many adults, having a baby is the most important milestone in life. For others, however, adopting a small dog is apparently just as good. DAVID CLIFF, of Gedanken, a company specialising in

coaching-based support and personal development, looks at the fascinating psychology behind the increasing humanisation of our pets.

Vet Pets Magazine

It’s no accident that Pope

Francis has called on people to have children and not get lost in the love of their pets.

Across the western world in particular, there is a growing trend for our pets to become even more important in our lives than they have hitherto.

Originally, cats and dogs held functional roles in our society. It was dogs first, as we domesticated them to be assistants in the hunt, early warning systems and even allies in battle before ultimately, in a modern organised world we bond to them for the companionship and loyalty they provide.

The track record with cats is a little shorter. It was the advent of agriculture that required the protection of food stocks from vermin where the cat became a vital component of protecting our food chain and was thus domesticated. Now as with dogs, cats are becoming increasingly acculturated to living alongside humans and subordinating many of their primal drives to a more accommodated behaviour alongside their human hosts.

In a world where survival is assured and lifestyles predominate, it is

understandable therefore that our pets take on an additional

dimension as companions. In a world where there are more single person households than we have ever seen in any previous time, pets provide vital companionship for young and old alike.

But are we, in a generation of lifestyle choices beginning to subordinate more complex human relationships, to the simplicity and ready-made unconditional love that our animal companions provide?

Undoubtedly, there is an increasing trend amongst

people to treat their animals as children. It’s an easy

transference to make given their inevitable dependency upon us for their survival in an organised world. Equally their dependency upon us never recedes in quite the way that children do. Children grow up and move on. Pets are pets for their

lifespan with relatively little change in the status until one ultimately must say, goodbye.

One only needs to read publications such as the Huffington Post to see increasingly the number of young adults who seem to prefer pets to the prospect of having families.

Fact: Pets are less work, you can leave them, for considerable periods whilst you pursue your social life, the intellectual and emotional needs of a pet are quite simply

Our pets provide ‘simplicity and ready-made unconditional

love’

Vet Pets Magazine

met unlike that of complex

sophisticated evolving human

children.

The glass half full viewpoint is that animals provide an

attractive form of

companionship in a busy world

where relationships are spread

more thinly across longer lifespans and people make

lifestyle preferences away from

traditional family type

scenarios.

Pets provide welcome

companionship to those

who elect a single lifestyle

or have particular life agenda

commitments.

The glass half empty is that

they are a substitute for the responsibilities of parenting

and remove the challenges and

developmental opportunities

that come from parenthood,

which is typically for the rest of

your life, rather than the

remainder of your pets’ life.

There is one important factor in

this, is that whether we use our pets as sentient creatures who

deserve the best we can give

them not because they are

companions that we are using

in substitution for other relationships but are beings in

their own right, who deserve

the best we can give them.

I guess the real test is does your

pet fulfil that category or is it

simply a lifestyle accoutrement

that fills a vacuum that one does not wish to fill with other

people?

In a psychological sense, it’s the

difference between a pet being a subject and an object.

Each and every pet owner has

to consider this. Owning a pet

is not an activity to be taken lightly. Equally, if one makes a

lifestyle choice to use animals

in substitution for other

relationships, one has to be

aware of the finite nature of an animal’s lifespan. That can

reduce a feeling of commitment

and being entrapped into

lifelong relationships, but

equally ones relationship

becomes lifelong in the context

of the pet’s longevity, not our own. Is this really taking

control of life?!

In all of this, just make sure

that Sophie, Lola, Tibbles and Jack are treated with the

respect that another sentient

being deserves. Their

unconditional love will put

up with much and their conscience is clear, but is

ours?

As for the Pope seeking to

re-populate the world, well nice one, you’d expect that

from a Pope. That isn’t a reason

to have a family and one also

must accept with

overpopulation and an unsustainable future, maybe

this trend to use pets as a

substitution for children, may

actually have a basis in ecology.

I certainly feel a lot safer having

encountered a man with three

chocolate Labradors in the back

of his car out for walkies rather

than the typical school run of Jeremy and Jemima and the

black Range Rover bearing

down in one’s rear view mirror!

I certainly know which is a

more sustainable prospect, with a smaller carbon footprint!

‘Pets are sentient creatures who deserve

the best we can give

them’

Vet Pets Magazine

Frances gilds, engraves and paints small glass

panes that are set into silver to produce a rare

collection of jewellery that includes pendants,

earrings, necklaces and cufflinks.

Portraits of a favourite pet are an integral part of

her creative work. These are miniature works of

art that can be worn. The jewellery settings are by

the goldsmith Justin Richardson, a Freeman of

the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. Their joint work was featured in ‘Who’s Who in Silver

and Gold’, Goldmiths’ Hall 2013.

Frances studied Illustration in the 1960’s, at

Camberwell School of Art and in those days drawing was a high priority. She found it useful

when, as a gilder in her own business, clients

asked her to replace broken, painted and gilded

flat glass panels, fitted into mirrors from the 18th

and 19th centuries. She worked for interior

designers, creating bespoke gilded glass panels for a variety of purposes, such as mirrors, tabletops

and wall coverings.

These days, she is concentrating on her true love:

portraits of pets. The medium is very fine and lends itself to a personal item of jewellery, or else

to a very special paperweight. She takes

enormous pleasure from creating unique

heirlooms for pet owners to remember their

beloved animals engraved in gold, to be treasured forever.

The Art of Capturing a Pet’s

Likeness

Following on from our competition to win a bespoke pet pendant, leading

British artist and gilder Frances Federer shares with Pets Magazine

readers the process of creating a pendant for our competition winner.

Vet Pets Magazine

From photo to beautiful pendant

1 Best photo of Loki

2 Frances drawing

3 /4 her drawings with the

final actual size sketch

5 Half a gelatin capsule is soaked in water. (See main

image.)

6 Making size/glue for the gold

leaf.

7/8 Cleaning the glass with

chalk and water.

9 Tipping out the gold leaf (See

over)

10 Spreading out the gold

11 Cutting the leaf12 Holding the wetted glass in

tweezers ready to lay the leaf

13 Laying the leaf onto the glass

14 Standing the glass carefully to

dry.

Once it is dry the leaf is polished

and is ready to be engraved.

15 Following the drawing the

gold is engraved, using a

magnifying glass16 Getting ready to apply backup

paint

17 Applying the paint

19 The finished glass with the

pendant

1.2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Vet Pets Magazine

Frances Federer can be contacted at: info@ffjewellery.com.

To see samples of Frances’s work: www.ffjewellery.com.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15

16.

17.

18.

19.

Vet Pets Magazine

Sophie Loves...Top product picks by Sophie, the

Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

Applaws Dog Tins£1.59 per tin.Applaws Dog Tins are a premium complementary dog food made using only the natural ingredients listed on the label and packed with up to 75% real meat. This is a delicious moist food that I can most definitely recommend. Fresh and nutritious with none of the usual processed moist dog food smell, this is a great choice.

F o r s t o c k i s t i n f o , v i s i t t h e A p p l a w s w e b s i t e (www.applaws.co.uk/store_locator.php).

The AquabrushThis handy canine kit is essential for dogs on the go, like me! Aquabrush is formed of a set of double action bristles fitted with a ‘pop up action’ nozzle which when opened allows the jet of water from the bottle to flow out. It is easy to clean as there are no electronics and is eco friendly as it is durable and re-useable. This brilliant invention from keen walker and dog owner David Koumis will be featured in our blog later this month. The Aquabrush is available through these websites: www.jkscreations.com or directly from the manufacturers at www.etree.biz.

Dreambone Dog Chews www.dreambone.co.uk

DreamBone are rawhide-free and contain real chicken filet wrapped in a chicken flavoured vegetable chew. I couldn’t get enough of the mini and small versions and shared the bigger ones with a Boxer and a Basset Hound who both also gave them the paws up. DreamBone is available to buy in Asda, Tesco and Morrisons, as well as online at Amazon and Ocado. The treats have a retail price from £2.49-£4.99.