How to Use AI to Become a Better Fur Parent

You can purchase all sorts of fun gizmos and gadgets to entertain and care for your fuzzy babies. Automatic treat dispensers, battery-operated toys and even a little light surveillance hardware have made their way into the pet owner's bag of tricks.

Since most of us will outlive our furry children, it's a safe assumption that you'd want the best for man's best friend while they're around to love and adore.

There's regular maintenance, of course, like vet visits, daily dental care, the dreaded anal gland expressions and torturous nail trimming drama. But if you want to take your pet parent relationship more seriously, here are some ways AI can help you become a better steward of the animals who feel like family.

Communicating with your pets

We all wish we could read Fluffy and Fido's minds, especially when the meowing reaches a fever pitch at 5 a.m. Each pet has their own quirks, and AI systems can generate exact answers for whatever off-the-wall questions you might have about peculiar behavior.

I asked Claude AI to explain to me a few oddball behaviors my dog exhibits, like rolling frantically on made beds. I also asked Claude to analyze why I wake up in the morning to my dog sneezing aggressively in my face half the time, and it gave me a plausible explanation. How to stop it is another story.

The more you know

Sure, you could drop around $100 on a kit to determine the exact DNA of your pet, but if you don't want to spend that much money, AI systems can make a pretty decent educated guess about the parentage and lineage of your dog or cat based on a few photos.

Gemini AI guessed (mostly) correctly about my dog's breed mix. He is a pit bull and hound, but there's also some Australian Shepherd in there that the AI missed.

Once you have a decent idea of what breeds your pet may be mixed with, you can get to the bottom of breed-specific behaviors and even encourage a certain skill set your pet may be inclined to learn, as well as adjust your lifestyle to better suit the wild calling in their ancestry.

Customizing care

A lot of things can go wrong with your pets, and depending on the breed or combination of breeds, there are specific considerations a pet parent can take to care for their unique four-legged companions.

AI apps like PetVise AI can give you a full breakdown of what to look out for when it comes to your pet's health and happiness; it can even create a breed-specific plan for your wiggly tail wagger or curious feline friend. It can help with things like your pet's diet, body fitness analysis, dental checkups, stool analysis, behavior and training advice, habitat audit and age estimation as well as help you find your nearest emergency center.

Just make sure you check with your vet before diagnosing or medicating anything for your pet. AI has been known to hallucinate.

Training and bonding

A pet owner can find no better way to strengthen the bond between a pet and them than by learning something new together, and AI systems can be great tools for developing a bespoke routine or training schedule that takes into account your pet's demeanor and personality while balancing the busy schedule of the human paying the bills.

Paid versions of Claude AI can also pull from customized information provided by you, like your pet's breed, behavior and overall training goals and methods.

Extra Credit: Soothing the savage beast

For some pet parents, it's not enough to just spend time with their dog or cat during waking hours. Cosleeping in human beds is an everyday occurrence for a lot of pet owners, and AI systems can help create a calming, curated experience for both animal and human alike.

For instance, Spotify's AI DJ can take requests and create a sleepy soundtrack that both people and pets will enjoy at bedtime.

You could also ask an AI system with voice chat feature, like Gemini, ChatGPT or Meta AI, to create and narrate a custom bedtime story featuring you and your pet so you drift into the land of nod with tails wagging.

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