HOWL Dog Theft Prevention App
We want to tell you about the new HOWL dog theft prevention app. It’s designed to help cut the levels of this awful crime. Few crimes can be as devastating as dog theft and yet so little punished. Dog theft is traumatic for our humans and even worse for us. Anything that can be done to prevent it happening has to be good news.
We never want to scare any of our two-legged or four-legged friends, but according to research carried out by Direct Line in 2020 2438 dogs were stolen from their owners and of those crimes only 2% resulted in a prosecution. If you don’t find that scary and shocking then you should.
Who is behind the new App?
A woman called Sara Burney has a Poodle called Brutus. She used to be a criminal defence lawyer, the woman not the poodle. Anyway, she used her experience to think about how to ensure dog crime is reduced and came up with the HOWL app.
HOWL
The HOWL app does a number of things. It holds your emergency contact details, notifies them when you start your work and keeps them updated about your location. It will also tell them if you are concerned or if you HOWL for help – as long as your human pressed the button. If they do press the button it will also start recording video of your location and what is happening, without any more buttons needing to be pressed. I tried it out with my brother, Salvo. He was the one going for the walk and I was his emergency contact.
Salvo’s walk
“I found setting my details a little clunky as the page didn’t automatically scroll down. I also have to admit to being a little sceptical when Wilma asked me to try it. However overall I have to say I ended up being impressed.
I was walking with my housemate and my humans near Tissington. You really should go there, it’s very nice. When we started the walk I asked my human to press the start walk button and that automatically sent Wilma the first notification of where we were. It uses the ‘What Three Words’ system to give an exact location but also there’s a map so you can see it as a picture.
As we walked Wilma received a notification every time we moved into a new zone and a new pin appeared on the map, tracking our walk. It keeps doing that until you finish the walk and your human tells it to stop recording.
Tissington feels perfectly safe and is a lovely place to walk, so we waited to make sure there was no one around before trying the HOWL function. You can choose which particular noise it makes in advance which it lets you try quite quietly. When you try it for real it makes a very loud noise. That is designed to attract help and also to frighten off any would-be attackers. When you press it the app also notifies your emergency contact so that they can call for help on your behalf without delay.
It seems a very good idea overall.”
What else you need to know
There are a few things you need to think about.
- Think carefully about who should be your emergency contact. The most obvious might be your second human if you have two, but the problem with that is that they might well be on the same walk with you. Someone who is in a safe location and able to call for help if you need it is ideal.
- Agree the procedure you want followed with your emergency contact in advance. Obviously, calling for help without delay is invaluable, but you might want them to ring you first to be certain and call for help if you don’t answer or if you do and say there is a problem. You might use it for having had an injury and it is an ambulance rather than the police you need, for example.
- You pay a one-off fee to download the app and then it is free to use. Compared with the cost and distress of dog theft that is very reasonable.
- We did a second test, or tried to, but in countryside if there is no mobile phone signal then the initial connection isn’t made. In that event the data does not send back to your emergency contact.
Howl for Help
There is also a Howl for Help website with useful information and tips on dog security. It is well worth a read regardless of whether you are thinking of downloading the app.
Love
Wilma
(ps the lovely main picture is my brother Salvo and his housemate Izzy who is my niece)