Dog News

The Link AKC is a GPS-Enabled Fitness Tracker for Your Dog

by Fred

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Finally, someone is taking the idea behind one of the most popular fitness trackers and matching it up with a GPS tracker, then putting it into a dog collar.  It’s called the Link AKC, and while you may be asking why you would need a fitness tracker for your dog (totally understandable), this device promises to do a lot more than just that.

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The fitness tracker is based off of your dog’s breed.  There are specific goals for activity levels, and will connect to a smartphone or computer to give you the stats that you’re looking for.  Hey, if you keep track of your health and weight, why not do the same for your dog?  It’s not like Rex is going to come to you one day claiming they need to be put on a diet!

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The Link AKC also has a built-in GP tracker as well.  This is one of the features that we are looking forward to, and if you’ve ever lost your dog or had them wander away from you, you’ll understand why.  You can even set up a pseudo-fence with it, entering parameters on it that will send you a notification if your dog wanders outside of that area.  It can even alert you if where your dog is would be too cold or too hot.

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The device is available for preorder, and they set to cost about $200 US.  There’s also a small subscription fee of $9.99 per month.  It keeps the device connect to both a cellphone and a GPS based network, and allows for updates ad improvements to the software that runs the device to be updated and improved upon regularly.

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There are other smart collars available on the market, so this isn’t exactly the very first one.  It is however the only one so far that has a subscription fee, and despite this, Link AKC believes that people will pay for the service no question.  It will be interesting to see if the device takes off, and if someone else ends up doing the exact same thing without the fee.

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