Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Bo Obama – we could go on and with a list of famous doggos.
And thanks to an ongoing research project in the US, soon your dog could join their ranks – being able to call emergency services and save the day.
Melody Jackson is leading the FIDO project in the US, a research group investigating ways to improve communication between humans and pups.
Facilitating Interactions for Dogs with Occupations (FIDO) is working developing lifesaving wearable tech for dogs, including a device which a dog can activate when their owner is in trouble – or as a response to a verbal cue such as ‘fetch help’.
Training a dog to take these actions would be as simple as training your dog to sit on command… for those who actually find the grueling task of training a dog ‘simple’, that is.
Melody Jackson told CNN, “The dog could go over to a touchscreen and touch a series of icons on the touchscreen and call 911 with your location. We think that, literally, this could change lives, make lives so much better, and be a life-saver.”
Melody Jackson, who is also a professional dog trainer (of course) and her team have already managed to train several dogs to operate a touch screen with their noses, activating a call out when they hear the command, “help”.
The buttons on the screen are presented in 3 colours, all of which can be seen through doggy vision. More research is being done to make this process as simple as possible meaning any dog can be trained to use it.
The team believe it shouldn’t be too long until doggy wearables are commercialised and available on the global market.
Until then, communication between you and your pooch may be a little ruff– but really, those eyes can say 1000 words.
