Lifestyle

Do you really need a puppy camera? Not remotely

Canines everywhere, beware. Because Big Owner is watching you.

Thanks to the new Motorola Pet Monitor and its accompanying app, now available exclusively at PetSmart, I can now spy on my dog, Mabel, wherever I can get a phone signal. One small question I have for its makers: Why would I want to do that?

But I decided to give it a try.

Christopher Yates keeps tabs on Mabel with his iPad.Astrid Stawiarz

As I suspected, it’s riveting stuff. I watch in awe as Mabel lies motionless on her favorite spot on the couch for hours on end. But then, in the day’s first exciting development, she repositions herself ever so slightly. This is electrifying viewing, just like watching an episode of “Homeland” — or, at least, it would be if you were to pause the picture on a close-up of Saul Berenson’s beard and advance the frame forward every 30 minutes so. Behold the furry mass as it twitches every half-hour on-screen.

But then, several days later, something genuinely exciting happens. Mabel leaves her favorite spot on the couch. To be fair to Motorola, this is probably what real spy work is like. Days of grinding tedium sitting in a van awaiting such brief but vital moments. And this moment is now.

Mabel jumps off the couch. SUBJECT IS ON THE MOVE. I use the camera’s controls to track her through the living room and then . . . wait, wait, SUBJECT IS OUT OF VIEW! (Why am I saying these words out loud into my wrist? Everyone in the coffee shop is staring at me.) Subject is in the kitchen. I NEED EYES NOW!

Why don’t we have a second $300 camera in the kitchen? Perhaps Mabel is meeting an al Qaeda operative. Perhaps the kitchen is where she keeps her secret copy of the Koran, her prayer mat, her plans to bomb the CIA.

Or maybe she went to get a drink of water.

But thanks to my poor espionage skills, and my lack of bonus spyware, we’ll never know.

Basically, the Motorola Pet Monitor is the same company’s baby monitor, reboxed and marketed to pet owners. But there are several reasons why this was a less-than-stellar idea. For a start, although your dog might not move around very much, you don’t keep it in a crib (and if you do, you need to get help). So while baby can be watched with one camera, your dog can, and probably will, move to another room.

Another problem is that the app that controls it hasn’t been retooled. For example, one of the features is a speaker that allows you to talk to your dog through the unit. This might prove useful with destructive dogs who suffer from separation anxiety. Your voice might soothe them, or at least shock them into stopping. However, this feature only works when you are on the same Wi-Fi network as the camera, so I could only speak to Mabel when I was in the next room. Which, thanks to an amazing technology I call “raising my voice,” I can do already.

In other words, Motorola tried to put lipstick on a baby monitor, but they didn’t think it through. So you could spend $300 on this pet monitor. Or you could shell out much less for a box set of “Homeland.” Some of the beard-twitching is spectacular stuff.