Your Pet's Collar Is Smarter Than Your Phone Was Ten Years Ago - The Rise Of Pet Tech

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WHAT YOU'LL FIND IN THIS ARTICLE

• Why pet technology has gone from novelty to serious business in a remarkably short time
• What the products actually do — and which ones are genuinely useful versus which feed owner anxiety more than animal welfare
• Where this is all heading — and whether your vet is about to become an app

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Just 15 minutes for lunch! 

Back to back Meetings all morning and after this sandwich there’s a conference call with management. 

In the back of your mind, you are worrying about the dog at home. 

Picking up your phone, you can log in and see her lying fast asleep through the pet cam in the kitchen. Holding down the microphone function you can encourage her outside, watch her get up, look around to see if you are there and then make her way to the automated dog flap which opens when the small sensor around her collar connects whilst you activate the remote water and treat dispenser. 

She’ll be happy until the dog walker arrives this afternoon.

Before the last bite of your BLT you’ve been able to check on her activity and heart and breathing vitals through the health app. All fine. Mind settled. Back to Microsoft teams.

This scenario isn’t the future, pet tech is here, it’s big business and we probably didn’t realise how quickly it was coming or what it means to how we care for our animals.

The global pet tech market was valued at $17.65 billion in 2025 and according to Fortune Business Insights, is estimated to grow this year to $19.98 billion, exceeding $50 billion by 2034.

In the UK, petz.uk reports that the market has grown 34% year on year to a huge £420 million. Wearable tech alone is estimated to grow to £445 million by 2033.

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These are big numbers and investment is pouring into the sector as pet humanisation moves from being what was once considered a quirky trend to a fundamental shift in how people think about pet ownership.

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Austrian GPS tracker company Tractive and US-based Petcube have raised tens of millions of dollars in investment from venture capital and angel investors to develop products and grow their business. In the UK pet tech companies are keen to get a piece of this global market: Felcana, a digital pet healthcare platform created by veterinarians that uses wearable technology and AI to monitor the health and behavior of dogs and cats, have appointed a new CEO to do just that; lead global expansion.

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The product landscape is broad and growing fast. Here's a quick tour of the main categories:

‍GPS tracking has been around for some time and is the most established category. Tractive’s GPS collar is the market leader and can send alerts to your phone if a great escape occurs, providing real time location and activity tracking data. Genuinely useful and now a mainstream product that has sold millions of units.

‍Health monitoring is the fastest growing and most interesting category. Smart collars now track temperature, pulse, respiration, activity levels, calories and posture, with AI-powered pain monitoring and early seizure detection emerging as premium features. The Petpace collar is one of the standout products available, offering continuous clinical grade health monitoring that can flag changes before symptoms are visible to the owner.

Smart cameras and feeders make remote management easy. Furbo leads the way with interactive cameras with two-way audio, automated treat dispensing and motion alerts. Sure Petcare has developed microchip-activated smart feeders that manage multi-pet households with each pet getting the right food in the right quantity. No fighting over bowls!

‍Smart toys are the emerging category . AI-enabled toys that adapt to pet behaviour are growing at 15.7% annually and genuinely address the issue of mental stimulation for home-alone pets. Wickedbone’s interactive bone toy is the most cited example of genuine AI adaptation to engage dogs with different play modes depending on the dog’s responses.

‍Veterinary telehealth is perhaps the most significant development. Apps connecting owners directly to vets for remote consultations are growing rapidly, with wearable data feeding directly into the consultation. The vet who sees your dog's heart rate data from the past two weeks before you've said a word is a meaningfully different clinical encounter.

The driving force behind these products is undoubtedly pet humanisation, but it is also a reflection of how we humans now live our technology-filled lives, striving endlessly for efficiency and convenience. Whether we are drawn to pet tech out of genuine concern for our animal's welfare or because of the control and reassurance it offers us is a question most owners would answer with mixed motivation. Probably both. Honestly, probably in that order.

Some of the technology makes a compelling and clear welfare case. A health monitoring collar continuously collecting heart rate, activity and respiratory data can flag a change before any outward symptoms show, potentially catching something early enough to make a real difference to outcome. A GPS tracker reuniting a lost dog with their family within minutes, rather than days of searching or never at all, is an unquestionably good thing, regardless of what motivated the purchase. These products serve the animal first and the owner's peace of mind second. And that's the right way around.

But not all pet tech sits so cleanly on the right side of that line. An owner checking their dog's heart rate graph every twenty minutes from their desk isn't necessarily a more attentive or better owner, they may simply be a more anxious one. Technology designed to provide reassurance can, in the wrong hands or the wrong mindset, become a generator of the very worry it was built to solve. Knowing more doesn't always mean worrying less.

There is also a broader question the industry hasn't yet answered clearly: the data these devices collect, biometrics, location, behaviour patterns, sleep cycles is genuinely valuable. To insurers, to pharmaceutical companies, to pet food manufacturers. Who owns that data, how it's stored, and what it's used for are questions worth asking before you clip a smart collar onto your dog's neck.

The collar your dog is wearing today is essentially a first generation device. What's coming is considerably more significant.

AI diagnostics embedded directly into wearables will move the technology from data collection to data interpretation; devices that don't just record a heart rate but flag patterns that suggest a specific condition is developing, before any clinical symptoms appear. The integration of that data with veterinary records is the logical next step: rather than the snapshot of an annual check-up, your vet has access to a continuous, longitudinal health record. 

Telehealth platforms are already connecting wearable data directly into remote consultations; the vet who sees two weeks of your dog's biometric history before you've said a word is a meaningfully different clinical encounter to the one we know today.

Smart toys are getting genuinely sophisticated too. The current generation is mostly motion-activated, the next will use adaptive AI that learns an individual animal's play preferences, energy patterns and responses. A sophisticated toy that adjusts to the pet rather than the other way around.

The UK pet tech market stands at £420 million today but in five years that number will look modest. The technology that transforms how we care for our animals is already here but as with all major shifts from a previously established norm there will be questions about who benefits, who owns the data, and whether the animal is always benefitting the most. 

However sophisticated the technology becomes, the emotional bond at the centre of it all remains unchanged. The data is useful. The walk home to a wagging dog is irreplaceable. 

Laptop closed. GPS collar off.

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