Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Bowlingual Dog Collar 'Translates' Barks - Paw Nation

Bowlingual Dog Collar 'Translates' Barks - Paw Nation


Bowlingual Dog Collar 'Translates' Barks

Categories: Dogs

Photo: Yoshikazu Tsuno, AFP / Getty Images

"Ball? Food! Squirrel!"

That's the gist of what we understand from our dogs. But a new product claims to make it easy to understand what your pup is trying to tell you!

The TakaraTomy Bowlingual Dog Voice Collar is designed to translate your dog's woofs and whines into emotions: Happy, sad, frustrated, threatening, needy or assertive.

While it's certainly a doggone cute idea, ABC reports that not everyone is buying in. For one thing, experts like Kathryn Lord, doctoral candidate in organismic and evolutionary biology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and co-author of a paper on the subject, say that dog barks aren't really the same as human words.

Dog owners aren't convinced either, with many questioning how this can work for every dog. Yesenia Aceves tells ABC, "Since I have personally trained [my dogs] according to the different sounds that they make, I don't know that I would really trust the collar's telling me what they want. I don't feel like all dogs do the exact same bark."

We're not sure the idea isn't barking mad. Although the collar isn't available in the States yet (only in Tokyo), the cost would be around $220 -- that's a lot of kibble! But, the Bowlingual collar can provide "translations" for as many as five dogs, so if you're trying to figure out how your hounds are interacting, it might be worth it.

We have Dr. Doolittle dreams, too, but is this the answer? Let us know what you think in the comments!




K momma. Save your $. I AM NOT WEARING that dumb thing! And you and I understand each other without "translators". Very simple. Use 2 hands to pet me. Feed me some of that yummy food. Hold me. Love me. Vote for me. And love me some more.

'vie
note it does not have even one sparkly thing on it!

1 comment:

Honeygo Beasley said...

I am with you Silvie - we don't need that. We are telepathic, too.