BBC Click’s Lara Lewington Features the PetPace Smart Collar.
From a device with a built-in laser game and cat feeder to a collar that can track your pet’s activity and health, BBC Click’s Lara Lewington looks at some of the latest technology for your cat.
WHAT IS PULSE?
WHAT’S THE NORMAL RANGE?
WHAT IF MY DOG OR CAT’S PULSE IS NOT IN THIS RANGE?
Depending on activity or environmental temperatures, persistent high or low pulse rates may be associated with numerous medical and behavioral conditions. In addition, certain dog and cat breeds are prone to specific disorders that result in altered pulse rates, for example:
HOW CAN PETPACE HELP?
WHAT IS HRV?
HOW DOES HRV REFLECT DOG AND CAT HEALTH?
WHAT’S THE NORMAL RANGE?
HOW CAN PETPACE HELP?
CASE STUDIES
Petpace collar key in post-op pain management of Pit Bull
Beagle with underlying chronic heart disease develops Congestive Heart Failure
WHAT ARE POSITIONS?
Positions, or postures, are how your pet stands, sits or lays – and for how long.
WHAT DO POSITIONS HAVE TO DO WITH DOG HEALTH?
In veterinary medicine, stationary positions may provide a significant clue to the health and wellbeing of your pet. Pets don’t tell us when they feel bad or are in pain. Yet, they are creatures of habit. They like to rest and lay in typical postures in specific locations.
Therefore, monitoring and learning this routine and finding deviations from it may help in the early detection of health changes or the emergence of pain.
HOW CAN PETPACE HELP?
Continuous measurement of your pet’s positions gives clinicians and caregivers important insights into health status.
For example, joint disease is very common in older dogs. Cartilage erosion and degenerative changes develop slowly and gradually over time, and are often accompanied by pain and discomfort. Owners often don’t notice the early changes, or attribute their pet’s slowing down to age.
Monitoring the frequency and amount of time your pet spends in each posture may reveal mild early changes and pain associated with degenerative joint disease. Changes in your pet’s routine can be measured, analyzed, and used to alert owners or veterinarians.
WHAT IS ACTIVITY?
Activity is simply what your pet does on a daily basis. Running, eating, sleeping, and everything in-between – all this can provide significant medical value, in addition to satisfying the natural curiosity of pet owners about how pets spend their days.
WHAT DOES ACTIVITY HAVE TO DO WITH DOG OR CAT HEALTH?
How much should my dog sleep?
Do older cats still play?
These, and other similar questions regarding pet activity and exercise habits, are not easily answered. First of all, there is significant individual variability, not unlike what we see in people. More importantly, this field of study is still in its infancy.
What is known is that monitoring and analyzing activity patterns and levels can provide valuable medical insights. For example, a decline in activity levels may indicate the development of a disease causing pain or weakness.
BREED-SPECIFIC ACTIVITY-RELATED CONDITIONS
Changes in activity levels can indicate a number of possible conditions in specific breeds of dogs, for example:
HOW CAN PETPACE HELP?
Changes in activity patterns and routines may indicate the development of acute or chronic health problems. Continuous measurement of your dog or cat’s activity levels and habits gives clinicians and caregivers important insights into health status.
The PetPace collar can help your veterinarian determine if your pet’s activity level is inappropriate for his or her condition, and examine whether a disease process is indicated. Moreover, PetPace can measurably assist caregivers during a pet’s recovery from surgery or treatment for any disease where controlling and monitoring activity is important for good clinical outcome.
SET ACTIVITY GOALS FOR YOUR DOG
The built-in Activity Page on your PetPace app makes it easy for you to set and track a daily high activity goal for your pets, how many minutes a day you want your dog to exercise in high activity.
CASE STUDIES
(Examples for the use of PetPace activity data in real clinical cases)
Activity monitoring facilitates exercise restriction in a Pit Bull treated for Heartworm infection
WHAT IS TEMPERATURE?
Your dog or cat’s body must maintain a relatively constant internal environment, called homeostasis, to ensure proper physiological processes. One of the main components of homeostasis is temperature.
This is why measurement of a dog or cat’s temperature is a part of any medical assessment. Fever, an abnormally high body temperature, is an indication that something is wrong and warrants further investigation.
WHAT IF MY DOG OR CAT’S TEMPERATURE IS NOT NORMAL?
Persistent high or low body temperature may be a sign of a disease. Additionally, heat stroke may develop following exercise in hot/humid conditions, especially in overweight animals, brachycephalic breeds (short-nosed breeds), or pets left in a closed car on a hot day. Some breads are more susceptible to temperature disorders, such as the Shar-Pei breed, which is prone to develop Familial Shar-Pei Fever (FSF).
HOW CAN PETPACE HELP?
Although monitoring of pet temperature is possible with traditional methods, these methods are inconvenient for pets and difficult for owners or caregivers. The PetPace smart collar offers a non-invasive, automatic, and continuous method of monitoring pet temperature. This offers significant value for preventive medicine for dogs or cats at risk of developing medical conditions associated with an abnormal temperature.
PetPace assesses core temperature based on a combination of parameters, including ambient temperature, activity level, breed information, and more. It reports temperature in qualitative terms – low, normal and high.
WHAT IS RESPIRATION?
Respiration is the process of gas exchange between the living body and the environment. Dogs and cats, just like people, extract oxygen from the surrounding air and in return release carbon dioxide. The lungs serve as the location in which this gas exchange occurs. Respiration Rate is the number of times your dog or cat takes a breath in a minute.
Note that panting in dogs is not respiration! Because dogs don’t sweat the way humans do, panting is part of the way dogs cool themselves.
WHAT’S THE NORMAL RANGE?
Depending on individual and environmental factors, respiration rate usually ranges between 10 and 36 breaths per minute at rest.
WHAT IF MY DOG OR CAT’S RESPIRATION RATE IS NOT IN THIS RANGE?
Persistent high or low resting respiration rates may be a sign of a medical problem, pain, or stress.
Abnormal respiration may be seen with some breed-related diseases. For example, certain breeds with short noses (Brachycephalic breeds), like the Pug, French/English Bulldog, Boxer, Pekingese, Boston terrier, Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Shih Tzu, and Persian cats, have very narrow airway passages, causing Brachycephalic Airway Syndrome (BAS, BAOS, BAD)
HOW CAN PETPACE HELP?
Slow, incremental increases in respiration rates, like we see with chronic diseases, are difficult to detect. Petpace continuously monitors and reports several Respiration Rate indexes. PetPace analytics combine respiration data with other vitals such as Temperature, pulse and Activity levels and generates immediate alerts if it detects abnormalities.
