Last Friday I headed to Crufts for the second time. Last year I was overawed by the amount of stuff you could buy for your dogs. My wife is a big shopping fan so loved walking around the halls buying loads of stuff for our puppy who at the time was only a few months old.

Spin on a year and thankfully our shopping list was a lot shorter... Phew!! However top of my browsing list was a PitPat - the activity monitor for dogs. I'd not heard of this little device until a few days before Crufts but it sounded great so I made sure I visited their stand.

I was greeted by a lovely team who were able to tell me all about the device and the inner geek in me couldn't resist buying one for Otto. The bonus was that we also got to choose a Chuckit ball thrower which I know Otto will love much more than the PitPat!

Once home I unpackaged the monitor and following the simple instructions was able to put it on Otto's collar, download the app to my iPhone and sync them up in minutes.  Then it was up to Otto to move about and get active!

After three full days of activity Otto has shown to be exceeding his 90 minute target easily, currently averaging 111 minutes per day.  As expected with a German Shorthaired Pointer most of his activity is running and of course sleeping.  It's reassuring to know Otto is as fit as we expected and will be seeing what else we can learn from our PitPat as the next few weeks and months go on.

Feedback from friends has been positive, everyone seems to like the idea and a couple of people have said it's "like a Fitbit for a dog" which is high praise indeed.