Pet monitors

Today's reality

For about $100, basic activity monitors-including such products as FitBark Dog Activity Monitor, Tractive Motion Pet Activity Tracker, Whistle Activity Monitor for Dogs, and more-give pet owners a peek at how much of the day their dog spends sleeping vs. active, with data delivered to their cell phones. At $150 to $200, more robust pet heath monitor products like Voyce and PetPace provide such data as temperature, heart and respiratory rates, activity, calories burned and more.

The fears

Pet owners will misinterpret the data and call more often with time-waster questions. 

The pluses

A pet owner who does call is demonstrating concern for his or her pet's health. This is likely to be an A+ client. Use their energy for good. 

The promise

Today specialists use monitors in some critical cases to track ECGs and blood glucose. While blood glucose isn't part of the picture for more broadly targeted monitors yet, at the higher end pet monitors can deliver alerts for arrhythmia detection and heart rate variability for dogs (and even cats). And someday you could get much better information than pet owners' recollections about how much more water their dogs are drinking when you're treating their diabetic dogs. Huzzah.