Dogs can’t talk but tag lets them trigger tweets

LOS ANGELES (AP) - So your dog follows your every move around the house. Now, when you leave home, you can follow your dog.

Puppy Tweets is an electronic dog tag with a sensor that you attach to your dog’s collar. It detects your pet’s movements and sounds and sends a variety of tweets to a Twitter page you set up for your dog on a computer or smart phone. You can invite all your friends to be followers, too.

The new Mattel Inc. novelty is aimed at the pet-loving social network crowd, said spokeswoman Rachel Cooper.

There are 500 tweets programmed into the software that comes with the .05-ounce devices, available in blue and pink. The frequency of messages is directly related to the activity level of your dog, she said.

If a dog is very active, he could tweet: “Chasing everything that moves is definitely a full time job!” If he is sleeping, his inactivity might trigger the message: “Your comforter does just what its name says it does.”

To guard against repetition, Mattel was adding 200 free tweets this week to the message library, Cooper said.

Bethenny Frankel, the star of “Bethenny Getting Married?” and one of “The Real Housewives of New York,” and her dog Cookie hosted the official launch of Puppy Tweets in New York Thursday night.

A limited number of the tags went on sale earlier this year. Some buyers on Amazon.com complained about software problems, which Cooper said the company was working on and had mostly resolved.

The tags won’t work on small dogs or cats, she said. And you can retweet messages as they come in, but you can’t reply _ at least not yet, Cooper said.

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Online:

http://puppytweet.com

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