Pets Magazine January 2015
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Transcript of Pets Magazine January 2015
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
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Vet Pets Magazine
Frances Federer can be contacted at: [email protected].
To see samples of Frances’s work: www.ffjewellery.com.
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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.