Leveraging Mobile Technology to Increase the Permanent Adoption of Shelter Dogs

Alcaidinho, Joelle; Valentin, Giancarlo; Tai, Stephanie; Nguyen, Brian; Sanders, Krista; Jackson, Melody Moore; Gilbert, Éric; Starner﻿﻿, Thad

doi:10.1145/2785830.2785861

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…In the context of guide puppies, compliance with guidelines of the center's trainers is crucial for the success of the guide dog training process. Although not mentioned by our participants, canine activity trackers can also have health benefits both for the puppies by affecting behavior of the human care-givers 9 , analogously to human activity trackers [18][19][20] .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such devices measure activity and sleep patterns, calorie intake, heart rate and body temperature, etc. Alcaidinho et al proposed assessing the suitability of potential working dogs using canine activity trackers in a pilot study 8 and showed that the use of such trackers can increase permanent adoption rate of shelter dogs by impacting the bonding between dog and owner 9 . The findings also suggest that monitoring the dog can affect humans' behavior, analogously to the way framing personal health information affects behavior and health change 10 .…”

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confidence: 99%

“…For puppy raisers, there are several aspects in which these technological aids for monitoring the behavior and wellbeing of dogs have the potential to support their duties. Firstly, they can improve the quality of care-giving, both directly, by making the puppy raisers more aware of the needs of their puppies (e.g., the expected amount of walking and sleeping), and indirectly, by affecting the dog-human bond 9 . Secondly, and more importantly, these canine activity trackers can help address an important gap, unique for the puppy raiser community, namely the need for efficient communication between the puppy raisers and the Centers.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Activity Trackers for Raising Guide Dogs: Challenges and Opportunities

Zamansky

Linden

2018

IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag.

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Guide puppy raisers play a crucial role in the process of training assistance dogs supporting mobility of the visually impaired. Recent technological developments bring about a plethora of IT-based solutions, such as canine activity trackers and mobile apps, that could provide novel benefits in supporting the puppy raisers in their important contribution to society. We present an exploratory empirical study of the perceptions and attitudes of puppy raisers and their guide dog center towards such technological solutions focusing in particular on their perceptions towards privacy. Guide dogs have been shown to provide assistance with mobility and independence for the visually impaired, while offering the additional benefit of companionship 1, 2 and are increasingly used worldwide. Preparing a guide dog is a complex process which requires considerable resources and intensive training 3, 4. A key role in the training process is played by volunteer puppy raisers, who serve as custodians for the animals for about 12 months. They are responsible for basic obedience training, exposure to various stimuli and socialization of the puppy during the first critical year of its life. During this period, they are typically supervised and guided by trainers of the Guide Dog Centers. They usually also form local puppy raising social groups, wherein they share ideas and information, work on training techniques, and participate in socialization outings. After 12-15 months the puppies return to the Centers for formal guide dog training of several months, after which they are placed with a vision-impaired person, to commence their working life. Despite their crucial contribution to the process of guide dog training, puppy raisers have mainly been included in research studies only as sources of information 5, 6, 4. Only one study addressed

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Activity Trackers for Raising Guide Dogs: Challenges and Opportunities

Zamansky

Linden

2018

IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag.

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“…Themes emerging from users' feedback were increased awareness, motivation and curiosity with respect to their pets' needs. Alcaidinho et al [5] investigated the use of canine trackers combined with a smartphone application in the context of sheltered dog adoption. Their pilot study discovered promising results indicating that providing dog quantimetric data to adopters through the use of a smartphone application could yield reduced rates of re-relinquishment.…”

Section: Activity Trackers: New Facilitators Of the Human-dog Bond?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Log My Dog: Perceived Impact of Dog Activity Tracking

et al. 2019

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The billion dollars' worth pet industry is catching up on the wearables market, as pet activity and location trackers are increasingly worn by our furry friends. Despite the growing body of work on user perceptions of human wearables, very few works have addressed canine activity trackers and their impact on pet owners' lifestyles and the human-animal bond. In this paper we report on an empirical study investigating perceptions of 81 users of a popular dog activity tracker. The results show that dog activity trackers are perceived to have positive impact on owners' motivation to increase their mutual physical activities with their dogs. The human-dog bond is perceived to be further reinforced by the use of activity trackers, increasing human awareness to animals' needs by giving them a "digital voice," and potentially improving the quality of human caregiving.

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“…When adopting, it is very important that the personality of the animal matches the needs and personality of the human beings who are adopting it. In this way, profiles of the animals' personality could be extracted and presented to the adopters (Alcaidinho et al, 2015). Finally, pet owners could also use this kind of systems in order to detect whether their animals are doing well while left alone at home, for example during working hours, and communicate remotely with them via cameras and microphones if abnormal behaviors are detected.…”

Section: Applications Within Animal-computer Interaction 51 Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing machine learning classifiers for the detection of animals’ behavior using depth-based tracking

Pons

Jaén

Catalá

2017

Expert Systems with Applications

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There is growing interest in the automatic detection of animals' behaviors and body postures within the field of Animal Computer Interaction, and the benefits this could bring to animal welfare, enabling remote communication, welfare assessment, detection of behavioral patterns, interactive and adaptive systems, etc. Most of the works on animals' behavior recognition rely on wearable sensors to gather information about the animals' postures and movements, which are then processed using machine learning techniques. However, non-wearable mechanisms such as depth-based tracking could also make use of machine learning techniques and classifiers for the automatic detection of animals' behavior. These systems also offer the advantage of working in setups in which wearable devices would be difficult to use. This paper presents a depth-based tracking system for the automatic detection of animals' postures and body parts, as well as an exhaustive evaluation on the performance of several classification algorithms based on both a supervised and a knowledge-based approach. The evaluation of the depth-based tracking system and the different classifiers shows that the system proposed is promising for advancing the research on animals' behavior recognition within and outside the field of Animal Computer Interaction. Highlights: • Animal Computer Interaction studies could benefit from automatic behavior detection • Cats' body postures and orientation can be determined using depth-based information • Depth-based trackers offer promising accuracy rates classifying cats' postures

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Leveraging Mobile Technology to Increase the Permanent Adoption of Shelter Dogs

Cited by 20 publications

References 15 publications

Activity Trackers for Raising Guide Dogs: Challenges and Opportunities

Activity Trackers for Raising Guide Dogs: Challenges and Opportunities

Log My Dog: Perceived Impact of Dog Activity Tracking

Assessing machine learning classifiers for the detection of animals’ behavior using depth-based tracking

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