When it comes to monitoring your fitness, Fitbit are the go-to choice for many. However, if you’ve ever wondered how much activity your dog does, a Fitbit won’t quite cut the mustard. 

That’s where PitPat devices come in. Our technology is made for dogs, not humans, and this drives everything that we do. We’re driven by science – meaning we’ve worked closely with vets to ensure we give you information that’s useful, actionable and accurate. 

Can you put a Fitbit on a dog?

Technically, yes, you could put a Fitbit on a dog. But it’s probably not going to stay there, or even keep working, after your pup drags it through bushes, jumps in that river or rolls in fox poo. Even if it does survive your dog’s adventures, the tracking won’t be accurate – after all, dogs are a different species, one that the Fitbit algorithms aren’t designed to track.

Activity tracking for dogs

The most obvious problem with using a Fitbit to monitor your dog’s activity is that it’s a product designed for humans. When it tracks your steps and converts this into distance covered, it’s basing this on the assumption that you have two legs and walk upright. 

As a result, your four-legged friend will throw up inaccurate results when using a Fitbit, leaving you with data that fails to give you any valuable insight into their fitness and health.

PitPat devices are designed for dogs. Unlike some others, the PitPat Dog GPS Tracker and PitPat Dog Activity Monitor, aren’t just a re-purposed human activity monitor – we designed all the electronics and software here in Cambridge. During the development process we analysed many real dogs of all different breeds and sizes and carefully studied how they moved to ensure our data was accurate and tailored to each dog. We continue to use data from our thousands of users to tweak and perfect the calibration for accuracy.

This means we can measure the activity levels of every type of dog – from the energetic trot of a Chihuahua to the lolloping gait of a Great Dane. We’ve refined our algorithms for all major dog breeds – such as the Border Collie, whose crouching ‘stealth’ gait meant we needed to increase the sensitivity of our devices significantly to be able to pick up their movements. 

Made for dogs

Fitbits are wonderful pieces of product design that look great on your wrist. But they don’t look quite so good on your dog’s collar, and they certainly can’t withstand the impact of their adventures.

The PitPat Dog GPS Tracker and the PitPat Dog Activity Monitor on the other hand, were designed to be at home with your dog’s adventures. We tested them extensively in muddy puddles, rolling in smelly fox poo, running through the undergrowth and with expert toy destroyers to ensure they could withstand everything your pup could throw at them.

Waterproof

It’s important that any tracker or dog activity monitor is able to withstand frequent dunks in water – after all, it’s going to go everywhere that your dog does, including muddy puddles, rivers, the ocean and the occasional garden pond. PitPat devices are designed to IP67 specifications, meaning their both waterproof and protected from dust and dirt. 

Robustness

We knew from the start that our tracker and activity monitor needed to be incredibly robust to deal with your dog’s day-to-day life. The devices are built to survive your dog’s adventures – whether that means being dunked into water, rolled in the mud, slobbered on, chewed and much more. 

As for securing the device so your dog doesn’t lose it, we’ve got that covered as well. After considerable testing, we found strong ‘parachute’ VELCRO® to be the best solution – when secured properly it’s almost impossible to pull off accidentally, meaning the only way your dog can lose it is if they lose their whole collar.

Battery Life

Unlike most activity monitors (of both the human and dog variety), we measure the battery life of our PitPat Dog Activity monitor in years, not days, and use a commonly available coin battery that you can easily replace yourself at very little cost. Our PitPat Dog GPS tracker comes with a wireless charger, and with normal use, most people will have a battery life of weeks instead of days, thanks to our clever tech designed to reduce power consumption.

Weight and Comfort

Whilst a Fitbit sits comfortably on your wrist, it’s probably less comfortable when looped around your dog’s collar. PitPat devices are designed to sit comfortably and quietly on your dog’s collar so that they shouldn’t notice it at all. That’s why we’ve made them seriously light and small, at just 30 grams weight for our PitPat GPS, and 16 grams weight for our activity monitor, so whichever one you choose even the smallest dogs can use it.

PitPat has been described as a ‘Fitbit for dogs’ before, but there’s a lot more to us than that. With thousands of dogs in the PitPat Pack, from all over the world, when you buy a PitPat you’re joining an active and growing community of dog owners, who use the location and activity tracking that we provide to keep their dogs healthy and happy.

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