Welcome to the Week’s Review of Canine Social Media
Welcome to this Special Feature on the DoggieU K9 Blog for an update on this week’s dog-related social media from around the world. There are so many stories. Here we will share some of the best stories this week.
Enjoy & share them.
A New Relief Fund For Dogs In Need
Dog owners are invited to visit the website essentialsupportdogs.pedigree.com/ to receive BARCODE BUCK$ digital discounts redeemable towards the purchase of any Pedigree dog food product. The discounts are offered in two denominations. The first is valued at $2.00, and is intended for any pet owner wishing to celebrate their canine companion. The second discount, worth $5.00, is targeted for people in need of financial assistance to help care for the family dog. Shoppers who redeem their BARCODE BUCK$ will be eligible to receive additional discounts.
- This initiative is the vision of Mars Petcare to emphasize its unwavering support for all dogs, as well as to provide financial assistance to families facing difficult challenges while maintaining the nutritional well being of their pets. The brand is pledging up to $2.5 million in direct consumer incentives to fund the effort.
- These incentives are offered through special displays at Walmart stores nationwide starting in May 2022 as well as on the PEDIGREE brand page on Walmart.com. BARCODE BUCK$, a widely utilized marketing program that instructs consumers to scan the digital discounts at a checkout counter where they are redeemable. Once scanned via the store’s system, the discount is immediately subtracted from the receipt.
- Benefits of BARCODE BUCK$ for the PEDIGREE Brand:● Rewards current brand users and engages potential new buyers● Digital discounts are distributed to shoppers’ phones, providing immediate savings to dog-owning families ● Eliminates potential for consumer or retailer fraud● All purchases are trackable, enabling capture of valuable first party data● Re-engages shoppers by awarding additional discounts specifically to consumers once they redeem their initial Barcode Buck$ value offer● Digital discounts are accepted at all Walmart stores nationwide
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Tracking Fitness and Health in Your Dog
Apple introduced the Apple Watch in 2014 describing it as a “comprehensive health and fitness device” (for people). It took a few more years of app development and technology evolution to make that a serious reality. So, Apple continued to sharpen its focus on fitness and health, and smartwatches became more and more popular. Sales for all smartwatches, not just Apple Watches, went up 61 percent in 2018. People were using the devices to monitor their health — tracking their heart rate, their steps, and their sleep. And gradually, more and more of them started to bring that information along to their doctors appointments.
Today, these technology and the health-monitoring possibilities have been developed for our canine family.
- If you have a pet with a health or medical problem this technology may be perfect for you.
- If you are obsessed with the technology of health monitoring – this is also perfect for you.
Dog tracking GPS collars have been widely available. They are truly invaluable if your dog gets loose and you need to find them. They have also been used by working pet parents to monitor the dog walker’s activity and look forward to text messages like “she pooped!”
A new ‘breed” of health monitoring devices combined with GPS have taken a page from the Apple Watch platform and created similar comprehensive health tracking for dogs.
A company called “Whistle” has a comprehensive canine fitness and health tracker that gives you more information than you ever thought you needed. They start with a database that
establishes the normal (or average) behavior for various dogs and tracks those behaviors in your dog. For example, the database tells you that Whistle has “tracked 5.9 billion activity minutes and most dogs need at least 20 minutes of exercise per day.” It then tells you how many minutes of activity your dog ‘logged’ today.
The device attached to a collar tracks: GPS, Scratching, Licking, Drinking Habits, Eating habits, Sleeping and Fitness.
It’s software also uses machine-learning to establish your dog’s unique profile to create a baseline history and offers results for a day, week, month, etc. and changes over time. It will even connect and send info to an enrolled Veterinarian for you. Whistle states that your dog cannot talk but it can communicate information to you through it’s behavior tracking.
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Some wonderful dog situations from Social Media
Click to enlarge pics and for slide show view
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