I wouldn’t wish the loss of a beloved pet on my worst enemy. (Granted my worst enemy is a pretty nice guy; drove me to the airport once.) Even the temporary loss of a pet is a devastating and horrifying affair. If you’ve ever surveyed the neighborhood looking for a runaway pooch, you know that singular dread all too well. Usually, it feels as though there’s only so much we can do beyond rallying a search party and pasting flyers on telephone poles. We as a canine-loving society really need to up the game nowadays; and hopefully, a new app will prove a more efficient way to track down missing dogs.
The app, which we first spotted at Laughing Squid, goes by the fitting name NOSEiD. Funded by the pet food company IAMS, NOSEiD presents the opportunity for a living library of scans of dogs’ noses. A dog’s nose serves as the functional equivalent of a human fingerprint; it is unique, and as such can potentially help to identify a dog who has gone missing without any tags.
How it works: you, a dutiful dog owner, scan your pal’s schnozz via the app. (Getting them to sit still for the scan may require some treat-based coaxing.) To accompany with the scan, you then input your home or contact information. This preliminary measure will ensure that your pup’s ID remains on file indefinitely. So if they ever get loose, a good citizen may likewise use the app to scan your wayward chum’s sniffer and find your deets.
Disney–ABC Domestic Television
Obviously, it’s not a perfect solution. Getting an unfamiliar dog on the street to sit still for a nose scan? Not necessarily the easiest of tasks, even if you do have some goodies on hand. But if it reunites even one lost hound with their harried human companion, it’ll have proved itself a worthy endeavor.