Customer Reviews

Puppy Tweets Pink

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This sounded like an interesting idea to me... it basically comes down to a collar attachment that detects sound and motion from your dog and then wirelessly sends the info to a program on your computer, which then writes a short tweet on a twitter account set up for your dog. I didn't have extremely high hopes for this device, but thought it would be fun to check in on my dogs during the day. I was hoping to be able to see a tweet every once in a while showing me that they were barking out the window, running around the house, or maybe napping while I was gone during the day. My low expectations weren't even close to being met by this device.

2 major problems:

1) It's really big! The device you hang on the dog's collar is 2 inches in diameter and 1 inch thick. The chain it is suspended on is another 1.5 inches, basically making the entire device 3.5 inches hanging off your dog's collar. This might not be a big deal to some larger dogs, but my 20 lb. shelties hated it. They would try to run and the puppytweets attachment would continually swing up and smack them in the face. They kept trying to bite it off and I constantly found them walking around with it in their mouth. They just hated having it on their collar. The most amusing thing that came out of buying this product is that the dog not wearing the device would try to chase after the other and grab on to the product while it was swinging around. They made a game out of this giant tag that flailed about while they ran. As I said though, this might not be a problem for larger dogs, and I would not have rated the product poorly just because of this aspect.

2) More importantly, it just doesn't work well. Setting up a program to randomly tweet and say it was my dogs doing it probably would have the same result that using the device did.

Opening the box, you get 3 items: the tag that I described before, a rather large and clunky usb drive (hopefully you don't have many usb ports close together if you plan on using this), and a separate 2032 battery. Basically, you set the device up by downloading a program from the puppytweet website, installing it, setting up the usb drive, and then unscrewing the tag, putting in the battery, pressing the reset button, and then letting the program do it's setup. I had to go through the process a couple of times before it would actually match up with the tag, which is another gripe I have - there's no way to tell if the tag is on or if it's even working. A sound, light, or something would have been nice, but there's nothing... and no way of telling if your battery is dead or not. It just tells you when it is matched. You go through a process of setting up a twitter account (or using an existing one), waiting for it to tell you the collar and USB drive are matched, and then put it on the dog's collar and wait for the tweets.

An initial one came saying something like, "Puppy Tweets Rocks!" (it most certainly does not). I waited for a while longer and nothing else showed up while I played with my dogs for almost 30 minutes. I had them running around, barking, jumping... no tweets though. I went back to the program and checked the status: It said everything was good. Why no tweets then? Well, you can set it at three different frequency settings, and I had it on medium, so now I bumped it up to high frequency. Immediately, three more tweets came by: "In typical fashion, the cat down the street is registered as an Independent. They can't ever commit to anything.", "Why? Because I can.", and "I've got a new leash on life!"... then silence. I let the dogs play with it on their collars for a while (even though they obviously hated it), and absolutely no tweets went by for 2 hours, even though I had it on the high frequency setting. There was so much activity, running, barking.... why wouldn't this device tweet about any of it? I thought maybe it was disconnected, but the status still said everything was fine.

I decided to give it a little more time and just let the dogs keep it on for a little while longer... over the course of 5 hours, three more tweets came through on the high frequency setting: "I <3 Animal Planet.", "Uh oh! It's getting late and I haven't finished scattering my toys all over the room for you to trip over when you get home.", and "L'il help! Nose stuck in bird feeder!"

So, just to summarize my experience: I had 7 tweets over about 7 hours while the dogs were running around, barking, and playing... and all 7 tweets were completely random. I don't know what or if anything that the dogs did actually set off these certain tweets, but I was expecting something more like, "Barking at the mailman" when they barked a lot, or "Chasing a rabbit" when they are running. Why would barking and running just set off stuff like "I <3 Animal Planet."? What is the point of having sensors to tell if the dog is barking or moving a lot then?

I can't recommend this product at all since I honestly don't see any point to it if the sensors aren't going to actually pick up on barking, movement, or silence. I don't need to strap a giant tag around my dogs neck to write tweets like "I've got a new leash on life".

Honestly, if the tag was MUCH smaller and the sensor worked and tweeted about actual activity instead of pointless tweets that could mean the dogs are doing any number of things, it might not be a bad little device. Unfortunately, this is neither of those two stipulations.

UPDATE: I kept the puppy tweets set up over the last 24 hours, and left the tag sitting on the desk while both me and my dogs were away (so, no movement and no noise). There were approximately 30 new tweets from it while on the high frequency setting. To my surprise, several of them said things like: "Who needs ambien when you've got a chew toy and the warm sun?", "It might look like I'm just sleeping, but I'm also working on my tan.", and "Guess what? I snored so loud I scared myself awake! I crack me up!". Looks like the silence and no movement actually did have an effect on the tweets since most suggested that the dogs might be asleep. Most of the tweets were still very random and some even seemed to suggest a lot of movement like: "Having my daily workout. Already did fifteen leg lifts! ; )" and "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and OOOOOWWWWWWCCCHHHHH!".

Since several of the tweets actually seemed to reflect the silence and no movement though, I'm going to go ahead and bump up my rating by a star. It's working better than I first thought, but I stand by the fact that I can't recommend this product. I enjoy some of the funny, random tweets put out by the device, but would still like to see more correlation with the actual activity - right now, it just has way too many random ones and not enough tweets actually about the activity... and I'm not sure why I was getting tweets suggesting movement when it was completely still and in a silent location. And, as I've said many times in the review: it's just way too big to actually leave on my dog's collar. Don't even consider this product if your dog is on the smaller side.

ok...after seeing this toy touted in the 'hi tech' segment of cnn on t.v. this morning...i couldn't resist writing this because i know how useful amazon reviews are to me and hopefully i can keep at least one more person from buying this.

This thing sends out random, and very uncreative messages i might add, ALL DAY LONG.

even if:
-your dog is sound asleep
-your dog never barks
-your dog isn't wearing the dumb dangly collar 'sender' with the fake microphone
-the battery has been pulled from the 'receiver' (with the fake antenna) plugged into your computer
-you have unplugged the receiver from your computer and thrown it in the garbage

the only way i could get this dumb thing to stop sending me texts all day was to shut down the software on my computer

the only thing you are paying for is to register on a website to be spammed all day by the team of dummies who developed this thing to get rich off of people who love their dogs

don't be another sucker....don't buy this!

I installed the software from the puppy tweets website an hour ago. I do not own the hardware at all, no transmitter, no receiver. The install didnt even complete all the way. It has sent two tweets so far without me actually owning the thing. Enough said.

I was really excited about getting this. I thought that at the least it'd offer me some insight into how often my dog barks, or how active she is. Sadly, I was quite wrong. The messages are cute in theory, until you realise that even with everything set up, it just spits out random messages that have nothing to do with what your dog is doing. I set it up on my parents computer to test it out and it worked well, and I was content, until I set it up the next day on my computer. Unless my dog has the exact same routine, and out of the 500 messages it couldn't come up with something new and original....it had all the exact same tweets in the exact same order as the day before. I would say I am impressed that it seems to be waterproof, but how would I know? What difference would it make?

After ordering in March and waiting until August to receive this item I am very disappointed. I was not aware that this item is NOT recommended for small dogs. (Only for medium to large dogs)

I was really looking forward to this item and I didn't even get to use it. I just returned it. It's WAY too big for my 11lb Pomeranian. :(

This item was not as advertised. I purchased this to be able to track my dogs while I was at work and this is a joke!

I've followed all the instructions and I keep getting an error message that says, "Tag Not Found". The instructions are simple, you just have to re-set the tag and insert the battery but it just doesn't work.

I ordered one of these for my dog, because I thought it was cute, and spending $20 on a dog toy seems like fair game, if I can get some entertainment value out of.

As others have said, I'm not sure that the dog's actions have much impact, although my dog chewed the first tag, and it stopped working, so it clearly does something.

My dog doesn't bark a whole lot, except when she's playing, and that hasn't seemed to trigger any tweets, but I have seems some whimsical tweets coming from the account. While I am not sure if it actually does anything, it is a cute little gadget.

As for the size, it is certainly large. My dog is a 45lb German Shepherd mix, and this thing is pretty big on her, but it doesn't get in the way of her doing her daily activities.

If she managed to chew a 2nd one, I probably won't replace it, but for now, the entertainment value of seeing my dog tweet while I'm at work is worth the cost of this.

I was expecting that this toy will send some messages about what our pet was doing at the moment that a messase was sent, but it isn't what happens. The toy send aleatory messages in a aleatory time, that's it. I don't recommend.

Puppy Tweets is great little gadget. Is it tweeting what my dog is actually doing? No - but it never promised to do this. it's a fun little toy that keeps me entertained at work. the tweets are often enough to keep me laughing every once in a while. i think it's lots of fun and wouldn't hesitate to get this as a fun gift for a dog person.