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Fido, Speak!

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Today’s post comes from the dealmaker and marketing genius Spin Williams, who is always in residence at The Meeting That Never Ends.

We’re always on the lookout for sparkling new ideas that have great potential but seem so ridiculous at first blush that most venture capital firms decline to get involved as a matter of image preservation – they simply don’t want to look silly.

No_more_woof

Well at the Meeting That Never Ends, we don’t have that problem. We know that the people who make BIG money must be willing to appear foolish sometimes – and maybe all the time. That’s why we love this Scandinavian dog communication project, called No More Woof.

Not only is it a creative and technologically feasible idea – it’s totally charming and completely fund-able. And if you don’t believe me, watch the video. It’s worth it just to hear the beguiling way those Swedes say the name of the product. If only my dog barked like that!

http://youtu.be/CweAeshjObA

We think this product has great potential, especially since making the connection between your dog’s thought patterns as measured by the EEG and actual sentences using words and complete ideas is an act of translation that is wide open to artistic license, and what’s more, commercial influence!

For instance, we all know that when friends come to visit you at your home, Fido will greet them with excitement and his thought patterns would likely translate into something like “Do you have anything to eat?” and “I’d like to sniff your butt!”

But who could prove that he didn’t also want to say “Forty Per Cent off selected Lady’s Shoes this weekend at Famous Footwear” or “Degree™ antiperspirant and deodorant is engineered for superior long-lasting protection!”

It’s possible, especially if Famous Footwear and Degree Antiperspirant decide to sponsor some time on your dog’s Stream of Consciousness. After all, who could resist a product when it’s pitched by your best friend?

Mark my words – Ad Mutts will someday completely take the place of TV. Recognizing that obvious truth before everyone else does is the thing that separates great entrepreneurs like me from always penniless consumers like, well … you!

That’s a free glimpse of your future. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so!

Your farsighted friend, Spin

Spin may have a point here, though it’s a horrifying one. But corporations would likely demand some kind of advertising override feature so Fido isn’t yammering on about getting low insurance rates through Geico while he’s shredding your new down pillows and chewing up your iPhone.

And although the name of the product is charming, what if it turns out that the word your dog is REALLY thinking of happens to be … “Woof”?

Given the power of speech, what would your pet talk about?

34 thoughts on “Fido, Speak!”

  1. My cat Peanut would say, “Pull down that blanket, I want to curl up on your chest for the night” When he wants me to pay attention to him, he’s actually saying, “You’re ignoring me too much, so I’m gonna annoy the hell out of you by knocking everything off the coffee table”. When I’m on the toilet and he always jumps on my lap (ugh), he’s saying, “You’re a captive audience now so you have no choice but to notice me – ha ha ha” When he and his companion fur person, Izzy, see a stray cat outside the window, then attack each other, they’re both saying, “I’m so upset with that cat out there that I’m going to take out my rage on YOU because I really can’t tell the difference between you and that cat outside!”

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Bootsy: “You gonna be nice? I’ll watch a while to see how you behave. Get outa my chair. Pet me. I’ll catch that mouse!”

    Lucky: “Where’s the food? I wanna eat. Outside? Inside? Outside? Inside? Where’s the food? Outside? Inside? Smells good. Where’s the food?”

    And those are direct quotes.

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  3. OT – I have two free tickets to “All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914” tonight at the Pantages Theater in Minneapolis. The performance starts @ 7:30 PM. Anyone interested?

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  4. Good morning. I was hoping that No More Woof device would be a way to stop dogs from barking when they are barking too much. Our dog, Henry, barks loudly whenever it sees people near our house or near where we are taking a walk. He also barks at cars. There doesn’t seem to be any way to get him to stop doing this. We have a device that worked for another dog we had which doesn’t stop Henry from barking. That device gives off a shrill warning sound when a dog barks that can cause a dog to stop barking. Henry just ignores that device.

    If we had the No More Woof device, maybe he could tell us what we could do to get him to reduce his barking. We could negotiate with him. Perhaps there are some TV shows he would like to watch in place of barking.

    I think we can guess most of what Henry would say if he could talk. It would be mostly “give me some attention”, “give me some food”, and “take me for a walk”. It would be good if he could tell us he needs to go out on those few occasions when we don’t notice his non-verbal cues and he ends up peeing on the floor.

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  6. Our first cat, Corfu, would alternate between “Is it time for you to feed me?” every twenty minutes and “Would someone PLEASE sit down so I can curl up in your lap?”

    Calvin, the brother of our brother/sister pair that came after Corfu, would probably say, “Good luck trying to make me poop in my litter box. I’ll do my business on the floor right next to the damn thing, thank you very much.” His second most common utterance would be “I’m going to keep beating up on my darn sister Patty until you trade her in for a cat who’s not afraid of her own fur balls.”
    Patty would probably say, “Please, please, please make Calvin stop chasing me around the house trying to beat me up. I;m running out of places to hide from him.” Her other common statement might be “I’m only afraid of everyone and everything because … well, because I’m afraid of everyone and everything.”

    Chris in Owatonna

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  8. my chorus of voices speaks so loud they dont need words
    paws the basset say “foood food food food pet me pet me pet me”
    nala says hey look over there… now look over there….
    vincent says i’m in. yep that sounds good. can i be by you?
    little dog says “i eat and sleep and poop therefore i am”
    henmmingway the cat says “purrrfect”
    ernie says “more more more”
    the fish say “thank you”

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  9. Perhaps some of our pets have artist talents that they would be able to share with help of the new No More Woof device. We think they spend most of their time lying around doing nothing. They might be putting their thoughts together to create great works of pet authored fiction. Tittles such as ‘For Whom the Dog Barks” or “The Adventures of Huckleberry Hound”.

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  12. For several years, to appease our neighbor to the south, we had our outdoor cats Charlie and Slushball on leashes in the back yard – had a slip line from the back porch to the big tree, and they could actually go quite a way before hitting the end of their tether. UNLESS they crossed path or went around the big tree, and then the ropes got tangled into the most God awful mess… For most of the summer they would say to me, as I came out for the 1000th time to untangle them: What the #@$*% have you done with my collar?

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  13. Do pet peeves count? My pet peeve is trying to replace two credit cards today. One appears to have been hacked. Do not know for sure yet.

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    1. I think we don’t want to have very much conversation with a pet peeve. We probably want them to go away or stay out of our way. Good luck on handling the credit card problem, Clyde.

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      1. How I spent my 69th birthday, talking with pet peeve:
        We have three credit cards. We use only one daily, which we use at Target almost daily, what with Sandy’s 20 plus prescriptions and my six. It’s our bank check card, which functions as a CC. All activity on the account is proper and the bank says that none of the cards of this type off their bank had been breached. We could get a new number but right now that might be a slow process. So we are going to ride it out through the week and watch.
        We were in Target last week and my wife tried to use a different card and it was rejected, but we did not owe any money to the account. So thinking about it, that one scared me. So my wife checked, and the account was still at zero. She then talked to a person there (getting to a person at cc company today is a long wait) to ask about changing the number. The woman said many people had reported the problem we had at Target with our card being rejected. Just to be safe they were sending us new cards.
        I checked on the third card, just to be sure, which my wife did not think she had used in the three week period. It was fine. But the company strongly recommended new numbers because many cards of that type had been breached.
        Then we are transferring our prescriptions to Cub from Target, which we started before all this came out. I took in three of my prescriptions to be filled. I dropped them off yesterday, went back today. BUT three of my prescriptions can only be transferred once, which I had done three years ago on a trip (Going from one Target to another is still a transfer). So the doctor has to reorder the prescriptions, but he is on vacation.

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        1. A very happy birthday to you, Clyde. I hope it wasn’t completely spoiled by the problems you are having getting your credit card difficulties under control.

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  14. Our dog would let us know exactly what she thought about that head gear in the video by chewing it up into little pieces. Her other utterances would be comprised of “Walk? Greeny? Walk? Outside? Inside? Play? Tug? Cuddle up with you?” Our smallest cat would tell us “You are big, clusy oafs and I will only approach you when you are lying in bed. Please tell my brother to stop eating all the canned food. I really like the duck cat food you have for us now”. Ginger, our other cat would say “Are you sure you want to drop those clothes on the floor? It is looking a little cluttered in here. Why haven’t you put down the Christmas tree skirt? I won’t bother it, I promise. Please put the throw rugs back, too. I promise I will be good”.

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  16. I believe it was Berke Breathed (sp?) who said that this is what dog’s are thinking — “I wonder if they taste like chicken.”

    I think the Scandinavians must be pulling our legs. Although Connie Willis wrote a wicked short story in her Miracle and Other Christmas Stories about a scientist teaching great apes to speak.

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  17. Dog would also ask “Why do you take me to the lady with the buzzing machines to have my hair cut off during the coldest itme of the year? She combs out my beard and fluffs up my eybrows, and shaves everything off, then you expect me to gladly go outside to do my doggie business. What is the big idea!”

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