Forget clipping an AirTag to your dog, this AI collar is where it's at

Being a modern pet owner means constantly worrying about the wellbeing of your little buddies.

There’s just so much to stress about. Are they freaking out while you’re gone all day at work? Do they have silent health conditions brewing that they won’t be able to alert us to until it’s too late? Did they somehow slip out the door unbeknownst to the dog walker? Are they actually just napping peacefully while you’re here overreacting? (Probably). I don’t need to explain, pet people get it. That’s why there are countless gadgets made to capitalize on our worries, many of them crap. But at least one smart collar at CES 2022 actually looks pretty legit.

Invoxia, a company known for its AI-boosted GPS trackers, is showing off a $99 collar very imaginatively called the Smart Dog Collar that can pinpoint your dog’s whereabouts around the clock and check their vitals — no matter how thick that pooch’s neck fur is.

Invoxia’s wearable is billed as “the first dog collar capable of continuous and non-invasive monitoring of both resting heart and respiratory rate,” making use of the type of sensors you’d expect to see in a (human) fitness tracker to more or less do the same job for your dog. The company says it worked with veterinarians to get the most out of the collar’s monitoring abilities. It can keep tabs on how active or sedentary your dog is, and let you know if it seems like something is up based on vital signs and behavior. Thanks to an embedded neural network, the system can analyze these metrics to clue you in to possible health conditions in their early stages.

And its location tracking feature is no joke.

Invoxia’s collar runs Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and LTE-M, boasting proximity detection down to how many feet away the dog is positioned from you. You can set it to alert you of escapes if your dog leaves the areas you’ve designated and, if this were to happen, flip it into Lost Mode for higher-precision GPS tracking. It builds on the company’s tried-and-true location technology already used in other devices, including an earlier pet tracking collar. Invoxia says it has “unlimited range” and can last several weeks on a charge.

This is one I’d actually like to get my hands on and test out. The one bummer is that to start, the Smart Dog Collar will only be available for medium and large dogs. It’s slated for release this summer in a slew of colors and, in addition to the upfront cost, you’ll need to pay for a $12.99 monthly subscription. Compared to similar products out there — which pack fewer features — that doesn’t seem too unreasonable. I’m just crossing my fingers for tiny dog drop soon to follow.