It’s every dog owner’s nightmare – their beloved pet pooch goes missing, with little chance of being found.
Well, one savvy pet parent has devised a brand new way to identify missing pups, with an innovative creation being able to identify dogs by just their nose alone.
Bradley Watson, 44, described to create Smart Snout after watching a number of police shows on TV.
He saw officers using fingerprint technology to collar crooks and realised that the same idea could be applied to pooches.
It is thought that every dog's nose has a pattern that, when coupled with the shape of its nostril openings, is distinctive enough to identify it.
Smart Snout's backers claim that owners can now benefit from this discovery and have created an app which utilises the technology.
They say this new frontier in pet safety will eclipse microchipping - which is currently a legal requirement in the UK.
The app is free to download but costs £4.99 annually if you want to register your dog's details.
Paying customers are asked to enter some basic information like name, breed and colour, as well as uploading a nose picture.
Bradley claims once that information is in, if the dog were to be lost or stolen and then recovered, the finder could simply scan the snout, Bradley claims.
At this point, the owner and the finder will be alerted to the dog's identity - reuniting to get the pooch home safely.
Smart Snout was only launched properly eight weeks ago but already has more than 2,000 subscribers - with even more downloads, Bradley said.
The company is also trying to get police forces across the nation to back it in a bid to further deter criminals.
Dog thefts have unfortunately become far more common, with London reporting a 75 per cent rise in dog thefts as criminals targeted pets bought during lockdown.
"I've been watching the growth of dog thefts, and I've witnessed it first-hand from customers,” Bradley from Bramford, Suffolk, explained.
“I've always tried to find a way - like I said, I was just watching police interceptors. They did a roadside scan of a fingerprint suspect.
"It brought up all their details on the system, and I thought, 'now why can't we do this with dogs?'.
"From start of life to death, a dog's biometrics on its nose doesn't change - that's where [the idea] came from.
"I then got in touch with a few investors and started working with an app team in London, and it works amazingly."
Bradley, a lifelong dog trainer, estimates that around £15,000 has been spent on the app so far.
Explaining how the app works, he said: “It's so so simple. You download the app, and you put in your basic details: email address, dog's name, colour, age.
"Then it comes to the magical part. You have two photos. One is a facial recognition system.
"And the second photo is the picture of the dog's snout. If you zoom in - phone's are so good now - you get that biometric print.
"Once you've done that, if you just leave your status as 'okay' on the app, anyone who walks past your dog and takes a photo - no details will be found.
"But if you change your status to missing...if I took a photo of a dog I found on the street, it will say, 'congratulations, you've found a dog'.
"And it will also tell the owner - it's an instant notification of data straight away. You can then communicate via email.
"Unlike with a chip, which you can cut out - that's just impossible with our system. You'd have to cut the dog's nose clean off. And no one is going to do that."
If you’re curious about Smart Snout, you can learn more here: https://www.smartsnout.co.uk/.
Featured Image Credit: SWNSTopics: Animals, Dog, Technology
Kimberley Bond