Home Pet Gadgets

Give your dog a little more room while riding in the backseat of your car

NEWS – Little dogs always have plenty of room to spread out in the car, but big dogs may need a little more space to be comfortable.  The Kurgo Backseat Bridge covers the gap between the front seats and the backseat, extending the space for your dog to sit or lay.  Covering the gap also prevents your dog – big or small – from falling to the floor or just getting down there and getting up to no good.

The Kurgo bridge is sturdy enough to support 100 pounds.  It’s recommended for spaces not greater than 13″ from back of seat to seat edge.  There’s a partition to keep Fido from climbing onto the center console and getting into the front seats.  It’s made of 600d polyester with TPE backing and is completely waterproof.  Black on one side and sand on the other, the bridge can be flipped to match your car’s interior.  The Kurgo Backseat Bridge is $58.49 from the Chewy website.

To fully protect the backseat of your car, you could add a Kurgo Bench Seat Cover.  This waterproof and stain-resistant cover protects upholstery from getting muddy, wet, scratched, or torn.  The Kurgo Bench Seat Cover is $49.49, also from Chewy.

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Give your dog a little more room while riding in the backseat of your car originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 21, 2018 at 11:24 am.

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Give your cat a climbing structure even if you don’t have a lot of free floor space

NEWS – Cats like to climb, and if you don’t give them something to climb on, they’re likely to climb your curtains.  If you don’t have enough floor space to dedicate a chunk of it to one of those big climbing trees, you may think you have no other options, but that’s not true.  The K&H Hangin’ Cat Condo hangs over the back of a door, leaving your floors free for furniture and walking paths.

The condo is made of waterproof, 600-denier nylon fabric that can be washed.  The compartments have a stiffening board in the bottom for support, and there are five levels with a total of seven exterior holes for your cat to climb in and out of.  There are also connecting holes inside so the cat can climb between levels.  It mounts to most any door with four brackets, two on the top and two on the bottom of the door.

The structure is 65″ tall and 16″ deep.  It’s available in your choice of 16″ (small) or 23″ (large) widths.  The small climbing condo is $64.20; the large is $85.63.  The K&H Hangin’ Cat Condo is available at the Chewy website.

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Give your cat a climbing structure even if you don’t have a lot of free floor space originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 17, 2018 at 10:00 am.

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gosh! easyPlay robotic pet fitness puzzle review

REVIEW – As a dog owner I’m always concerned whether or not my 9-year-old puggle Zoey is getting enough exercise. Her activity level isn’t what it used to be, and the summer heat limits the amount of outdoor activity she gets. She’s very finicky when it comes to her toys. Usually, if she can’t eat or destroy it, she won’t play with it. I thought a toy like the gosh! easyPlay would be great for her both physically and mentally. Let’s see if I was right.

What is it?

easyPlay is a robotic remote ball designed to keep your pet active. It uses a smartphone app that lets you interact with your pet and even reward them with treats for playing with it.

What’s in the box?

  • easyPlay robotic ball
  • Micro USB to USB charging cable
  • Feather cat toy accessory
  • User manual

Design and features

The easyPlay is made of a durable easy to clean plastic. The ball itself measures 6-inches in diameter and weighs just over 2-pounds.

The top of the easyPlay twists off to reveal the food pods. You can fill them with your pets food or small sized treats.

There’s a 720P HD wide-angle webcam located on the front of the ball. Just below the cam, there’s a speaker and microphone.

The backside of the ball is where you’ll find the treat dispenser, micro USB charging port, on/off switch, and the reset button. There’s also a battery LED indicator.

The wheel track, which is used to maneuver the ball is located on the bottom.

easyPlay app

To set up easyPlay, you first have to download the free app from the App Store or Google Play.

The app interface is simple and easy to use. The Homepage is where you access all of easyPlays features. You can set a profile pic, feeding times and even set and track your pets activity levels. It also allows you to see the network connection and the easyPlays battery level.

You can also select how you want to interact with your dog.

Manual play allows you to control the ball remotely and access the camera and speaker features.

When autoplay is selected, the easyPlay will move on its own for 30 seconds. Profile allows you to track and set your dogs activity level. The app keeps track of how many plays your dog has for that day. A play is registered every time the ball is rolled, so 1 roll = 1 play. You can choose to set either a daily goal or a minimum play goal. You can even have an alert sent to your phone when your dog hits their daily goal.

Performance

I was really excited to start playing with my dog Zoey using easyPlay. Unfortunately, my excitement was short lived. The first issue came with the fact that the easyPlay can only be used on a completely flat surface. Since most of my home is carpeted, I was relegated to using it in my kitchen where I have a small tiled area. So if you don’t have tile or hardwood floors the remote control feature is unusable.

Controls

Although the app is easy to use and pretty responsive, no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the ball to go straight. It always wanted to travel in a semi-circle. And the ball is easily knocked off its tracks and often becomes stuck in an unmovable position.

Treat / food dispenser

I was disappointed that there was no way to dispense a treat individually using the app. Instead, you have to set a specific time of day for this to be done. When its time the pod rotates so that it lines up with the dispensing hole. I use a small bite kibble, and Zoey was able to get all of the food out within a few rolls of the ball. I really was hoping it would be a little more challenging for her to get the food out. Even larger treats came out fairly easily, not much of a puzzle.

Camera

The camera works okay, but it’s positioned a little low for you to get any quality still shots. Unless your pet is standing a few feet away, all you see are legs and paws. It’s also located on the opposite side of the treat dispenser, so if your dog is like mine, that’s the part of the ball they’re most interested in. As you can see from the short video below it’s really hard to make out what is going on when your pet is actually playing with the easyPlay.

The app does allow you to save pics and videos to your camera roll or post them on your favorite social site. Although it’s hard to get any pics or vids worthy of sharing. Images below are unedited to give you an example of the camera quality.

The sound quality of the speaker isn’t very good, and the sound from the built-in microphone sounds like a garbage disposal, luckily you can mute the mic from the app.

Battery life

The easyPlay’s rechargeable battery has a continuous play time of  4.5 hours and a standby time of 12 hours. You can put the easyPlay into sleep mode to save the battery but, this disables the WiFi meaning you can’t access it with the app until the sleep mode timer expires. Another issue I ran into was the pop-up alert you get on the app when the battery is low. It pops up non-stop every few seconds, rendering the app utterly useless. Considering the app already has a battery indicator the pop-up isn’t really necessary.

What I like

  • Durable, well constructed
  • Easy to use
  • The app interface

What needs to be improved

  • Too expensive ($150)
  • Remote control feature only works on completely flat surfaces
  • Poor camera placement and quality
  • Poor sound quality from speaker and microphone
  • Can’t immediately dispense treats
  • Short battery life
  • Food and treats come out too easily, not challenging enough

Final thoughts

Conceptually the easyPlay is a great product, unfortunately, most of what it does suffers from poor execution. Sometimes MORE is LESS, and that’s the case here. easyPlay does a lot of things, but it doesn’t do any of them particularly well. I really wanted to like it, but there are just too many flaws that just can’t be overlooked. However, Zoey does like playing with it if only for the food, so that’s a positive.

Price: $149.95
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided by gosh!.

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gosh! easyPlay robotic pet fitness puzzle review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 29, 2018 at 9:00 am.

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Capture the perfect selfie of your furry friend

NEWS – Woofie is a small holder that clips to the top of your smartphone to make capturing the perfect picture of your pet easier because it gives your pet your absolute attention. Well, not really YOUR attention, but close enough. The secret of the Woofie is that it is designed to hold your pet’s favorite treat near the camera lens so he’ll be looking at the camera when it comes time to say cheese! No more yelling his name over and over to try to get him to look at the camera.

Woofie is compact so you can easily take it with you when you and your four-legged BFF are out on an epic adventure. Woofie is available in Glamour Green, Posh Pink, or Slay Grey for $9.50 from Modelcitizenpet.com and Amazon.

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Capture the perfect selfie of your furry friend originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 20, 2018 at 12:00 pm.

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The elevated Booster Bath makes washing your dog less backbreaking

NEWS – Our dog, Teddy, is only about 14″ tall at the shoulders.  Washing him in our walk-in shower is murder on the back.  If we had the elevated Booster Bath, he’d be about 30″ off the floor, so we wouldn’t need to crouch in the floor to wash him.

The Booster Bath is an elevated tub with a collar and 3-point harness system to keep Fido in place while he’s getting a bath.  A rubberized and textured non-skid mat keeps your dog from slipping and falling.

The tub is open in the back, so an optional set of steps can be added to help get bigger dogs into the tub without lifting them.

The tub can be used indoors or outdoors.  When using outside, you can attach the fan sprayer to a garden hose, and used water will drain away through the flexible 5′ drainage hose.  When using indoors, you can attach the fan sprayer to a showerhead by using an optional water diverter; using the drainage hose indoors will keep the water from splashing all over you as it drains away in the shower stall or bathtub.

The Booster Bath is available in three sizes, medium ($129), large ($149), and extra large ($199), to fit most dogs.  Red, teal, and lilac are the available tub colors.  Purchase a Booster Bath at Chewy.com, Amazon.com, or any of the other retailers recommended by Booster Bath.

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The elevated Booster Bath makes washing your dog less backbreaking originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 13, 2018 at 10:00 am.

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