And now there is doggycam. For the New Yorker who loves their dog but has to work but doesn’t want to use doggy daycare, there is the dog walker. How do you know they actually walked your dog?  A company called Swifto was mentioned in today’s New York Times. They have developed a GPS device that you can access via an app on your smart phone. They say: “View a live map of your dog’s walk. See the exact route, miles, and duration of the walk with alerts when the walk starts and ends.”

The New York Times article starts off with a graphic description about how it works:

“At 7:03 p.m. on May 25, my dog went to the bathroom in front of the Chinese massage place up the block from my house in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

I was not there, but I know this is true because a “poop alert” popped up on my laptop, 22 miles away at a friend’s house. A poop alert is a little white-on-brown icon of a squatting dog with, yes, a small pile beneath its tail, superimposed on a map of the walk fed by GPS data from the walker’s phone and updated every few seconds.

In addition, I received a text message on my phone. “Barnaby has just pooped.”

Blimey.