This is a Volkswagen Super Bowl teaser commercial (because those exist now) featuring a bunch of dogs barking out the Imperial March . It was sent to me by Geekologie Reader Robert, who you might remember made the original AT-AT dog costume . Apparently he sent his plans to a girl who made her own, and is now reaping the benefits. People: they will rip you off. Reminds me of the time everyday somebody finds an article on Geekologie, posts it on their own site, links to a different source, BUT DOESN’T BOTHER CHANGING THE FILE NAME I MADE FOR THE PICTURE. I know, I know — first world blogging problems. I’ll still f***ing cut you. Hit the jump for the video.

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VW’s ‘Dogs Barking The Imperial March’ Commercial

Dinosaurs : everybody in their right mind wants one for a pet . But can we have them? Noooooooooooo, scientists are all, “f*** your dreams — we don’t care about you! We’re too busy making money for pharmaceutical companies by developing drugs that cure one thing and give you six others.” Enter this series of dinosaur pet costumes from Animal Planet, probably the closest you’ll ever come to watching a real pet dino run around your house eating cats. Ooooooor licking its own butthole and then trying to give you a kiss. DAMMIT CHLOE, NO — I SAW WHERE THAT TONGUE JUST WAS! And for the record, yes, it did make me love you a little less. Hit the jump for a worthwhile triceratops dog hat and turtle costume.

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Canine Cosplay: Pet Dinosaur Dog Costumes

You know how they say people look like their dogs ? That’s because most people are ugly (alternatively: pugly ). I don’t look anything like my dog . I look like something Michelangelo would have carved out of marble with a diamond dong, and she looks like she’s licking her vaj and doesn’t care if I’m watching WHICH I’M TRYING NOT TO. Pedigree’s New Zealand branch hired design agency Colenso BBDO to come up with a new way to get the word out on pup adoptions. Using the idea that dog owners tend to look like their pets, Colenso teamed up with NEC to develop Doggelgnger, “Human to canine pairing software, designed to connect real homeless dogs to their human doubles.” You can go to the site and use your webcam or an uploaded photo to see what dogs you look like, which, SPOILER: ugly ones. At least that’s what it gave me and I’m what 4/5 dentists gynecologists would describe as “devilishly handsome” and “not supposed to be in here”. Hit the jump for a couple more shots and the link to try it for yourself.

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Doggelgnger Facial Recognition Matches You With An Adoptable Pet That Looks Like You

Always wanted a tiger or panda bear but were worried they’d maul the faces off everyone in the neighborhood? That’s because they would. Thankfully, now you can have your dog dyed to look like one. Because why stop at just chopping off their balls? Hit the jump for several more of the poor bastards.

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Eye Of The Tiger Dog: Chinese Pet Dyeing

This is a video of two enema bags in an airplane doing a nosedive so the dog in the back experiences weightlessness. I can’t tell if he liked it or not, but my guess is no. Dogs, as a rule, like their feet on the ground and their tongues on their privates. And can you blame them? You can’t. But you can blame them if they sleep with you at night and toot in their sleep. DAMMIT CHLOE YOU’RE GIVING ME NIGHTMARES! Hit it for the short video.

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Dogs Love Trucks Planes: Weightless Dog

For our routine late morning walk today and at a neighborhood BBQ on Saturday, I put Uncle Milton’s Pet’s Eye View cameras on Ruby and Malcolm’s collars. They’re lightweight, mini cameras that clip onto collars and snap 640×480 photos at 1, 5 or 15 minute intervals. I set them on 1 minute intervals, and we were off! Photo: Ruby Keilana The above is Ruby’s photo stream. Most of the pics were blurry shots of the grass or of my legs, but she took several solid nature photos. I especially love the one of the gravel &mdash nice, isn’t it? The shot of Malcolm’s butt is lovely too. The camera only stores a maximum of 40 photos for up to 5-6 hours &mdash after that, the 8MB SDRAM internal memory erases itself and you lose everything. Most of the pics ended up pretty blurry, which made me wonder why this thing doesn’t have motion sensors or at least some kind of basic blur reduction mechanism. Photo: Malcolm Keilana Malcolm took a lot of pictures of my legs &mdash he must have wanted cookies from my treat bag. I expected to see a lot more of other dog’s butts, or maybe even their faces because he likes to sniff muzzles, but one major flaw of this cam is that it takes pictures not necessarily of what he sees, but what his neck is pointing to. Also, the camera just takes pics randomly every minute, so it’s likely they’re either sleeping or running around &mdash neither of which yield quality photo opps. These were the best six shots out of two rolls of 40 each. These cameras are $40 apiece &mdash it’s super low tech and doesn’t take great photos, but could be a fine gift for crazy dog moms and dads, maybe. Product page [Uncle Milton] This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs .

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Pictures taken by Malcolm and Ruby using the Pets Eye View camera

My pug Gus is a lazy sack. No disrespect, but it’s true. Which is why I’m not at all opposed to putting him to work and/or keeping more rigorous tabs on his extreme indolence so that I can hold it over his head. Enter the SNIF system, an accelerometer built into an RFID tag that logs and transmits motion data to an Ethernet base station that plugs into your router. In addition to streaming real-time, online status updates (sleeping, sitting, walking, etc.), the SNIF web site creates a browse-able history of your pets activity or, in Gus’ case, inactivity. Check out my pug’s data, and observations after the jump… This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs . Quantifying your life , a variety of health data points, experiences, food consumed, etc. makes sense. But doing it on behalf of your dog ? Well, I just don’t know. The SNIF Tag system is simple to set up, easy to use, and $150, which is about as expensive as a no-frills, wristwatch heart rate monitor you could use to track your own activity level. However, what’s important to realize, is the SNIF doesn’t actually provide any hard and fast health data. It doesn’t measure calories burned or heart rate or even GSR . So what does it track? “Average Power Correlate” (APC), which the company claims is a “correlation based on empirical measurement.” In other words, a relative measure of the amount of energy that accumulates in the tag’s accelerometer. Thus, the charted numbers themselves are rather meaningless, which was a bummer in that I was unable to make any comparison(s) to my own level of fitness, distance traveled, etc. Still, the visual cues are interesting and do provide a clear picture. Days can be broken down by the hour: Then into 5-minute chunks: Potentially helpful if you have a sick animal (sad!) and want to determine whether he/she consistently loses energy after meals &mdash or anytime you’re not home. You can also call up historical data and “Compare” your dog to other animals registered for SNIF, including by breed, zip code, and general classification (Gus is a “Toy”): Of course, this data is potentially meaningless for a variety of reasons, least of which is the fact the data are only as good as the people submitting it. If I forget to put the tag on until after Gus’ morning walk, or neglect to charge the battery every night, then I’m submitting only a portion of his actual activity, which skews the results others might be comparing their animals to. It’s also worth considering the Hawthorne Effect , which suggests people don’t behave naturally in situations where they know they’re being monitored. Hence, some SNIF users might be taking their dogs on longer or more frequent walks than normal. And that, right there, seems to be about the only real reason I could see someone buying this device. It’s a reminder to take care of your dog, to dedicate extra time and energy towards his/her health. The real-time monitoring &mdash perhaps by virtue of the fact Gus isn’t a sporty little pugger &mdash was fun at first, but got old real quick: From a technical perspective, too, the system could be improved. I really wish the base station was wireless. Having to plug directly into my router was a pain in the ass &mdash and if I wanted to upload data via USB (instead of wirelessly via the tag, which only works up to 50 ft.*), I would’ve had to lug my laptop across the room to the router. It’s worth noting this was a non-issue for me, because the SNIF USB software isn’t yet Mac-compatible (another complaint). Lastly, SNIF offers all the familiar social networking tools and features: friend invites/accepts, messaging, wall posts, etc. To be honest, I found these all useless. There simply isn’t a critical mass of users: Total number of dogs in SNIF network: 212 Registered pugs: 7 (including Gus) Dogs in my zip code: a 9-year-old female Coton De Tulear (huh-wha?) One suggestion that could be kinda fun for some dog owners: Add in a customizable status update a la Critter . SNIF could let you program in a range of phrases for specific APCs, and then broadcast those 140-character messages to your mobile: “Dad, I’m totally bored right now,” “Your socks are delicious!”, “Am I kidding about the socks? Guess you’ll have to come home to find out, dude!” Then again, do I need or want to receive regular, sarcastic Tweets from my dog? …probably not. *you can purchase extra base stations for $75 Previously: The Pet's Eye View Camera lets you experience your dog's foulness … Zoombak tracks dogs (or anything else) with aGPS - Boing Boing Gadgets Putin's satellite-tracked dog not a harbinger for anything - Boing … Garmin Astro DC 30 GPS collar for hunting dogs - Boing Boing Gadgets

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Review: A Few Days with a SNIF Tag

I’ve yet to see Up , but I keep hearing about this hilarious dog in the film, which speaks its mind through a telepathic thought-to-speech collar. While it sounds like science fiction, that technology is closer than you might think! Researchers at places where things are considered to exist estimate that similar collars could be around the neck of your beloved dog as soon as telepathy is a real thing. Until then, there’s ” Hound Bytes “, an x-rated clip-on speaker that barks theoretically humorous quips when triggered by remote control. It’s only $13 plus shipping, far cheaper than a dog costume, the traditional way to embarrass a dog and its owner at the same time. [via John Biggs ] This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs . I mean, not on .

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Hound Bytes is a bargain basement Dug the Dog

This video has nothing to do with click training (that I know of). But I’ll go out on a limb and say it had to have taken some deep, deep discipline to shoot that thing. Personally, I’m all about affirmative verbal cues and occasional treats. Other dog owners prefer the non-verbal conditioned reinforcements of a handheld clicker. So which is more effective? According to one study, recent study the use of a clicker resulted in a “decrease of over 1/3 in training time and number of required reinforcements” when compared to verbal conditioning. Plus, click training also promoted the superior acquisition of complex behaviors (on a limb again, but just look at that video!). Most of Clickertraining.com’s 15 Tips seem pretty straightforward and helpful: Click for voluntary (or accidental) movements toward your goal. You may coax or lure the animal into a movement or position, but don’t push, pull, or hold it. Let the animal discover how to do the behavior on its own. If you need a leash for safety’s sake, loop it over your shoulder or tie it to your belt. A clicker costs $1.50 . How hard could this technique be, really? If you’ve used a great book, web site or video, or just want to share your experience, please write us in the comments… This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs .

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HOWTO Click Train Your Dog

Sometimes, my dogs puke. This is because they eat everything from grass to flip flops to sheets of paper towel soiled with grease. Twice, Ruby got into a huge bag of dark green iron pills and had to get her stomach pumped. Several weeks ago, Malcolm puked out a grass-and-kibble stew, which I didn’t discover until I got home hours later. All of these incidents had left seemingly indelible stains on my carpets and couch. Enter SpotBot Pet, a not-so-little cleaning robot that claims to work any stubborn pet stain &mdash be it puke, pee, or butt juice &mdash out of carpets and upholstery. It has three modes &mdash one for surface stains, one for deeper stains, and a manual mode for use with the attached hose. The SpotBot Pet has two fluid tanks–one for a cleaner-water mix and another that dirty water gets sucked back into. Below the dirty water tank is a pair of nylon bristle brushes and little vacuum cleaner heads that simultaneously scrub stains out and suck dirt in. Its diameter is 8 inches, so any stain bigger than that might require two treatments. The SpotBot came with a trial size of Bissell’s Pet Stain & Odor advanced formula cleaner, which supposedly works for pee, puke, and butt juice. Perfect. A full cycle of the set-in stain takes about five minutes and is deafeningly loud. It didn’t bother me that much, though &mdash after spending days trying to scrub canine vomit out with soap and water and Nature’s Miracle, I was beginning to think the couch would just have to sport a puke stain motif forever. I was willing to listen to this Bot do its deed. Five minutes later: The couch was soaking wet, but the stain? Gone! It was awesome. I tried it on an area of carpet stained with pee, too, and it worked great. At $140, it’s a tad pricey and it’s heavy and loud, but it works, and it doesn’t require any manual labor other than picking the thing up and placing it on top of the stain. Product Page (Bissell) This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs .

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Review: A puke stain with the Bissell SpotBot Pet