Do you ever wonder what your dog is doing when you’re not home? Or what your dog does when he goes wandering? A dog collar camera will answer all your questions, and it works on cats, too.
Our dogs are incredibly well behaved and we trust them implicitly in the house when we’re not home, but still you wonder. Do the dogs sniff the garbage even though they don’t disturb it? Are they thinking about getting into the garbage? Do they sneak up onto the couch to take a snooze?
Do the dogs eat the houseplants but not enough to leave evidence behind? Do they go crazy at the windows when they see a cat or dog outside? Do they bark a lot?
Do the dogs fuss at each other? Wrestle and play together? Curl up and snooze together like bosom buddies? Neither of our dogs is a breed that loves to hang around in a pack; both are designed to be solo dogs. We have a Catahoula Leopard Dog and an Ausky, which is an Australian Cattle Dog/Husky mix. Both are difficult breeds to train, and we’ve worked super hard to ensure their success as housedogs.
When we adopted Dakota a few years ago, she was the worst dog imaginable. We couldn’t trust her for two seconds out of sight, let alone with full run of the house and us not home. It took a lot of elbow grease to mold her into a really good dog, and today she’s awesome. There’s little left of the bad dog we’d once adopted, but you wonder if she still thinks about dirty deeds.
When we come home there is no evidence to indicate that they’ve done anything amiss, but still it’s possible to do a deed and leave no sign behind. Yesterday, we got our first glimpse into the world of dogs when their people aren’t home.
We put the dog collar camera on Sierra, the Catahoula Leopard Dog, and then left for two hours. Both dogs have full run of the house when we’re not home and the last thing we see as we pull out of the driveway is Sierra’s head looking out the bedroom window, and Dakota’s head looking out the kitchen window. One dog upstairs, one dog downstairs, but then what?
The full movie was one hour and forty minutes which is how long we were gone. Our Catahoula spent the entire time either looking quietly out the bedroom window, or snoozing on her blanket. Once she came halfway down the stairs, perhaps thinking we’d come home, but when she saw there was nothing of interest she went back up to the bedroom.
Every now and again she’d scratch an itch, and one time she gave a low growl when she spotted something outside, but it was brief and over with quickly. At no time did she come in contact with our other dog Dakota, who presumably stayed downstairs which totally surprised us. We thought Dakota preferred being upstairs unless she was with us. Granted, she may have been upstairs but not in the same room as the other dog, and we won’t know her home alone preferences until we put the dog spy camera on her.
As for Sierra, the real activity began when we pulled in the driveway which sent her into high gear. She’d been snoozing on the dog blanket but jumped up and ran to the window when she heard the truck. As soon as she was sure it was us, she ran downstairs to greet us.
If you’re curious about what your dogs do when you go out, invest in a dog collar camera. We used the Eyenimal Petcam, which is advertised as being “the world’s first video cam for pets.” It records sound as well as video, has a rechargeable battery, and connects to both a Mac or a PC computer to download the videos.
If you’d like to read the story of the problem dog that challenged us, Bad Dog to Best Friend shares her dirty deeds, head-strong nature, humorous anecdotes, and some of our tips in retraining her.
