I’ve never been more certain that Daisy is actually a cat.

July 21, 2020 7:30 AM

There are two things you should understand about my dog, Daisy. First, she hates walking. She’ll get excited if you take out the leash, but it’s a farce. She just wants to pop out and then go immediately back inside. This is partly because she doesn’t understand that if you go all the way around a street block, you will end up back at home. Second, she is wily and stubborn. She’s faked a limp, made herself vomit, or pretended to faint more times than I can count just to get out of a walk. I have the vet bills to prove it.

She is the absolute worst dog to put a fitness tracker on. Which is exactly why I did it.

In total, I tracked Daisy’s activity for about a month. Her data didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. That was disappointing, but not in the ways you’d expect. That’s because the numbers I saw didn’t make any sense.

Daisy and I, along with my partner and his cat, live in a roughly 550-square-foot studio apartment. There’s not a lot of places this dog can go. Yet, almost every day the tracker said Daisy had walked over two miles. I’m telling you, this lazy ass dog has not walked two miles continuously in years. A few times, it said that Daisy had logged a handful of minutes but had somehow walked several miles. Daisy often pulls fast ones on me, but there is no universe in which this tiny geriatric con artist could walk a mile in one minute.

posted by Johnny Wallflower (30 comments total)

The D in IoT stands for Dog! Also, possibly, Daisy.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:38 AM on July 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'm going to let you guys finish, but you do want to know that my actual cat Daisy turned twenty-one this spring. Carry on.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 8:31 AM on July 21, 2020 [87 favorites]

My experience with GPS-based activity trackers is that occasionally the position will glitch by a few hundred feet, just because real data are noisy. I have a smartphone fitness tracker that I turn on while I jump rope on my patio, which somehow activates its GPS mode, and then it tells me that I've traveled a half-mile while the phone itself has been stationary on a table where I can see it. When I look at the map of my activity, I learn that I twice teleported into my neighbors' houses.

A scientist would write tests to detect and exclude these outliers and glitches. A salesman would put the product on the market.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 8:44 AM on July 21, 2020 [31 favorites]

fantabulous timewaster: "then it tells me that I've traveled a half-mile while the phone itself has been stationary on a table "

For the sedentary, this is a feature, not a bug.
posted by chavenet at 8:50 AM on July 21, 2020 [10 favorites]

> fantabulous timewaster: "then it tells me that I've traveled a half-mile while the phone itself has been stationary on a table "

For the sedentary, this is a feature, not a bug.


You've basically described the only reason I've hatched any Pokemon Go eggs during shelter-in-place.
posted by hanov3r at 8:52 AM on July 21, 2020 [32 favorites]

A scientist would write tests to detect and exclude these outliers and glitches.

I'm not much of a scientist, but I did a project once that used GPS datapoints to build tracks, and we'd get a lot of noise. A pretty simple Kalman filter did wonders to suppress the outliers. It was easy enough to implement that I'm now suspicious whenever I see a GPS-based application that doesn't do something similar.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:56 AM on July 21, 2020 [7 favorites]

This Daisy is more energetic.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:09 AM on July 21, 2020

Even if it's just a regular fitness tracker (or the built-in step counter on your iphone) they have tons of quirks and are only so-so at measuring the actual distance a person travels. However, I'd bet even lazy dogs get the fitness-tracker equivalent of 2 miles of travel a day. That's only like 3thousand steps. Even lazy dogs get up to eat and pee.

Also the Whistle website says "Recommended for dogs 8 lbs and up", and since hers is 5 lbs, the tracker probably is a bit large for hers.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:14 AM on July 21, 2020

We have these on our dogs and have for years (we had Tagg trackers and switched to Whistle when they were acquired), and the article is correct that GPS jitter makes them totally worthless as activity trackers. We have them because one of our dogs is an incorrigible escape artist and the other one is a follower par excellence, and it helps us figure out which way to start walking and calling their names when they get out of the yard. For that very high stress situation it's been worth every penny - if you have dogs who are always fucking off down the road and getting into dumb adventures I can't recommend them highly enough. But the "fitness" notifications are utter nonsense, just less than useless.
posted by potrzebie at 9:25 AM on July 21, 2020 [13 favorites]

I know a few people who enjoy boasting about their 55mph max speed while skiing, ignoring the fact that they most likely achieved this by teleporting down the valley and back in a short period of time. Definitely a feature and not a bug!
posted by quacks like a duck at 9:49 AM on July 21, 2020

if I weighed 5 lb I'm not sure I'd worry about getting exercise either
posted by supermedusa at 10:59 AM on July 21, 2020 [19 favorites]

"A timeline of a typical day alternated between spurts of “low activity” and “resting.”"

I mean... same.
posted by ErikaB at 11:04 AM on July 21, 2020 [37 favorites]

One of my favorite things to watch a bored dog do is when they scratch at their collar until the buckle and tags make one or more complete revolutions around the neck. I wonder if that was in play here.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:11 AM on July 21, 2020 [11 favorites]

That would almost certainly trigger the step counter, which in some devices is what triggers it to assume that it should believe the GPS when it says you moved..
posted by wierdo at 12:20 PM on July 21, 2020

I definitely thought this article would end with the revelation that Daisy has been sneaking in nightly jogs on a treadmill or something, but nope. She's truly an inspiration for us all. Live your best life, Daisy!
posted by fight or flight at 12:43 PM on July 21, 2020 [15 favorites]

As if I needed another reason to have Norma Tanega's "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog" in my head.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 1:13 PM on July 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

My Mom’s lemon beagle was also named Daisy. We used to joke that she came from the Puppy Hill Daisy Farm.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:20 PM on July 21, 2020 [5 favorites]

fantabulous timewaster, Daisy is a gorgeous grannycat.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:24 PM on July 21, 2020 [4 favorites]

What you really need is RTK. Fat "cat" positioning down to the centimetre.
posted by klanawa at 1:45 PM on July 21, 2020

I Put a Fitness Tracker on My Lazy Dog.

Did the author compensate for the Quick Brown Fox factor?
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:20 PM on July 21, 2020 [17 favorites]

My cat is actually a dog so i kinda feel you.
posted by confusedconfused at 4:43 PM on July 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

As someone with a kelpie, who needs 2 hours exercise per day, Daisy laziness seems so foreign. I did a 30km walk with mine one day and he only sat down 2-3 times in the entire walk. Daisy must be a cat!
posted by greenhornet at 5:04 PM on July 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Today my dog was worried because I was packing our stuff to go away. He always worries a lot that I might forget him, though I never do. But at some point during guarding me carefully when I was writing, he fell asleep on my feet, and then proceeded to dream wild dreams, where his legs moved in the air and he made sweet little barks. I'm just saying: maybe Daisy moves in her dreams.
I just read today that dogs rest 12 hours a day. That seems way off to me. My dog is a mix of all shepherds and he is always alert when he is out or when there is any action in our house. He will only sit when I ask him to, and then he gets up before I permit it. If we walk for four hours, he doesn't think of resting, he needs to control the herd (of humans, our family). But when he is inside and feels things are in good order, he sleeps. And sleeps. And sleeps. I'd put it at 18 hours rather than 12. Maybe more.
We have a new car, and he doesn't like it, so I decided not to stop for peeing or drinking during our trip, because I was worried I couldn't get him back in if he got out without help. Then I worried that he would be restless after the trip where he slept most of the way. Nope. After an hour of happy zooming when we arrived, he is now sleeping like a baby.
posted by mumimor at 5:22 PM on July 21, 2020 [10 favorites]

I'm just glad to learn that I'm not the only one who suspects my dog is a cat.
posted by Red Desk at 12:00 AM on July 22, 2020

I have a cat which is really a dog. He comes when called by name, and greets you at the door, unlike our biological dog, who will stay on his doggie bed in the other room when you get home.
posted by kozad at 6:28 AM on July 22, 2020 [4 favorites]

This is a hilariously different perspective, as someone with a high drive dog who still really wants to race forward on walks 100% of the time and is still working on controlling that desire after a full year of consistent training. I can't imagine what it's like to have a dog who doesn't want to walk, let alone run! At least mine is a play-hard/sleep-hard type (after much encouragement to settle down when indoors).
posted by randomnity at 10:28 AM on July 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

Years ago, for a short amount of time, I fostered a stray. I named him Däg. I made a sign that I hung above the door that said 'WILKOMMEN ZU DÄGSTADT". That was extent of my german.

I later had a cat that I wanted to be named Mom, but I was voted down.
posted by eclectist at 2:19 PM on July 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

I just read today that dogs rest 12 hours a day.

I recall reading that cats spend 80% of their lives asleep to some degree, so that doesn't seem that extraordinary to me. After all, both are predators in their ancestral wild forms and if there is one thing for which sleep is good, it is keeping a creature comparatively out of trouble.
posted by y2karl at 4:48 PM on July 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

It’s worked for me for years.
posted by darkstar at 1:50 AM on July 23, 2020

Norma Tanega's "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog"

I knew a cat named Dog. I wonder if was inspired by this song now.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 8:16 AM on July 23, 2020