There are many accelerometers on the market now for dogs to measure their activity levels. Though there are so many on the market, there hasn’t been any external studies to validate the tool.

This study looked at the FitBark 2 and they were trying to correlate the FitBark activity data to dog step count. All the dogs (26 of them) were fitted with a collar mounted FitBark and individually recorded for 30 minutes using a three-phase approach. The first was off lead with room to explore, the second is human – dog interaction and the third was on lead walks. Video analysis was used to count the number of times the front right paw touched the ground and this was used to work out the step count.