Barking up the techno tree

Life on four legs has changed a lot since Charles Cruft, a British Victorian pet food salesman, staged the world's first dog show. Today we are witnessing the unstoppable rise of Techno Dog.

Unstoppable up to a point. Instead of crying "heel!" as your hound vanishes over a hill, modern owners can send a smartphone voice message direct to the dog's remote-control collar. If that doesn't work, track him down with built-in GPS.

At the 124th Cruft's Dog Show, in Birmingham, UK, at the weekend, Samsung showed off the kennel of the future - a £20000 (about R362000) dream doghouse featuring a "push-to-woof" owner-summoning system, automated food dispensing and a heated hydrotherapy relaxing pool.

"We did a lot of research on what modern dog owners want, and we see this as the kind of tech the discerning dog of the future will expect," said Andy Griffiths, president of Samsung UK.

Wired and fully interfaced, Techno Dog increasingly sneers at such relics of dogdom as leads and whistles.

Who needs them when there are cool gadgets such as the Blue Fang collar, which serves as an advanced communication link between dog and owner?

The owner sends messages by iPhone or Android and the dog sends back responses, giving information such as how much ground he has covered and what his heartbeat is.

The US-designed Blue Fang can even distinguish between "natural" and "needless" barking, and send out a puff of citronella essence to deter the latter.

Then there's PetPace, a collar-mounted system that claims to monitor your dog's mood and sends you an SMS if he's feeling out of sorts.

Technology products are by far the fastest-growing segment of the dog products industry and a quarter of the creatures in the UK now have their own social media profiles.

Which may explain the rise of Narcisso-Dog. On display at Crufts yesterday was the world's first dog selfie-taking kit, invented by dog food company Canidae. The dog stands on a pressure-sensitive mat which triggers a camera.

"We see this as a big step forward," said Steve Brown, managing director.

"If there's one thing people love more than their dogs it's sharing pictures of them, and our kit helps them do that."

Although many see such gadgets as bringing a welcome bow-wow factor to the venerable business of keeping a dog, traditionalists worry that the core values of dog ownership - trust, loyalty, understanding - are being eroded.

"A lot of owners don't even want to exercise their dogs any more, and they don't know that a good relationship comes from spending lots of time together," said long-time Crufts regular Nancy Randall, 63, an old-English sheepdog owner from Harrogate.

"Knowing your dog is the key to everything. If you treat him like some kind of robot you won't get much pleasure out of it."