Tweety Dog

There have certainly been any number of useless "novelty" products over the years - PetRock, anyone - so I won't say that this one takes the dog biscuit.

But do we really need a dog collar that sends tweets?

Apparently, Mattel thinks so.

This fall they'll be launching the Puppy Tweet, that enables your dog to send Twitter "updates."

When I first heard about this - thanks to my friend John Whiteside, who is both a dog lover and a techno-guy (but who I doubt will be buying one for his pup, Teddy) - I thought, wouldn't that be interesting.

I've always wanted to get into the mind of a baby, a bonobo, or a beagle, so the idea of a bit of technology that could actually interpret what a dog was seeing, feeling, and thinking was really intriguing.

Alas, Puppy Tweet is no more a communication device for our furry friends than Chatty Cathy was a doll you could really and truly hold a conversation with. (Not that I ever had one, but Chatty Cathy came with a string in her back, and you pulled it to hear pithy sentences like "Please take me with you," and "I want a cookie." Chatty C, by the way, also came to us courtesy of Mattel.)

No, Puppy Tweet is just a tweet parrot, a $29.99 collar which:

...detects when your dog moves or make a sound, then randomly selects one of 500 pre-written tweets to post to Twitter. Your dog has to be within a reasonable distance of the room with your computer in it, though; the tweets are sent wirelessly from the collar to a USB receiver that has to be plugged into a supported Internet-connected device. (Source: Mashable.)

...A couple examples [of the tweets]: “I finally caught that tail I’ve been chasing, and . . . OOUUUCHH!” and “I bark because I miss you. There, I said it. Now hurry home.”

The human part of the equation, presumably, has to establish the Twitter account for their pet, which I'm guessing a lot of them have already. Thus a built-in market for those who want to ease the burden of having to tweet for their dog by having the dog do it on his or her own.

Somewhere out there, there may be a dog or two capable of tweeting. I read somewhere that Thomas Mann's pet once sat in front of the typewriter and pawed out something about being a bad dog. Perhaps he had just gnawed up the original manuscript for Buddenbrooks.

Now that's a dog I'd like to hear a tweet from.

Sure, it would be awwwwww cute to get a little fake tweet from your best friend, the first couple of times, anyway.

But if more dogs were like Thomas Mann's super-hund, we could get the real truth:

• Just humped the leg of a chair. That felt good.
• What makes them think I like venison?
• I'd prefer watching The Dog Whisperer to chewing their slippers. Leave the damned TV on!
• Still can't tell the difference between dog-bowl water and toilet-bowl water.
• Sniffed three new butts today.
• How'd you like to have to hold it in for 8 hours?
• Another second and I'd have nailed that squirrel.
• Never get tired of stick-fetch.
• I dream about flying. And flunking obedience school.
• As a species, we are so underestimated.

Now, that be worth buying a tricked-out $29.99 dog collar to find out. And can you imagine the hordes signing up for it? Ashton Kutcher, look out....