San Francisco-based start-up Waggit has created a smart collar that monitors dogs' health and helps owners care for their pets by giving them early indicators of potential health issues.

Waggit establishes the dog's personal baseline, and alerts its owner whenever its behaviour deviates. The collar tracks aspects of the dog's health, such as resting vitals, activity, temperature and sleep – including its favourite sleep position, as changes to this could indicate pain and health problems.

The smart collar comes with an app that allows owners to set individual activity and nutrition goals, as well as following other dogs and comparing their dog's activity on the leaderboards. As well as enabling app users to proactively care for their pet's health, the collar's built-in GPS gives them peace of mind as it allows them to check if their pet is safe at home or find it easily if missing.

There are a number of collar monitors on the market for tracking pets' exercise and sleep habits. However, with Waggit's alerts, dog owners are informed of potential health problems early, which means they have a better chance of fixing these problems before they become serious. The $249 collar is expected to launch in March 2018.

The global pet wearable market is expected to reach $2.36bn by 2022 (Grand View Research, 2016). For more on how to engage with today's pet owners, see Pet Parents: Premium Pet Care and Engaging Global Pet Owners.