The smart pet tag released by Crumb has seen incredible, nationwide publicity this year. Now, after sending out almost 1,000,000 tags to pet owners in the UK, United States and Canada, their tags have helped safely reunite thousands of pets. Here’s a breakdown of it’s features:
QR Code
Unlike a normal pet engraved pet tag, which has the owner information etched into the metal, the Crumb smart tag has a QR code. This means that owners don’t need to buy a new tag every time either their home address or preferred phone number changes. We love this feature particularly for times when owners need to go away without their pet. The contact information on the tag can be changed in seconds to whomever is looking after your pet.
The QR code can be scanned by any smartphone, is waterproof and scratch resistant.
Online Pet Profile
When the QR code is scanned, a pet profile is loaded on the screen. This profile gives the finder of the pet all of the information required to get the pet home safely, including:
- Breed
- Age
- Home address
- Owner contact
- Medication
- Allergies
- Other notes (behaviour, etc…)
This information is invaluable to veterinarians, who are able to treat the missing (and potentially injured) pet far better having the extra medical details at hand.
All of this information can be hidden at any time if you’re ever worried about privacy.
Location Alert
When a Crumb tag is scanned and the finder shares their location, the owner of the pet will immediately get a text notification with the exact GPS location of their missing dog/cat.
Knowing the exact location of where to find your pet is incredible helpful, especially if your pet was found in the countryside or not close to any landmarks.
According to Crumb over 10,000 missing pet location texts have been sent. You can only imagine the relief an owner must feel when that text comes through.
Vet / Shelter Notifications
When a pet wearing a Crumb tag goes missing, the owner is given the option to immediately notify every vet and animal shelter within 10 miles.
This feature is invaluable in cases when a pet has slipped their collar and is roaming free with no tag. By alerting every vet / shelter anyway, your pet can be helped effectively and immediately reunited with you regardless of whether or not they still have their tag.
According to vets who have received these notifications, they are incredibly helpful.
Community Alerts
Similar to the vet / shelter notifications, Crumb will also notify every other user in your local area when your pet goes missing. Doing this is far more direct than putting up posters or asking for help on Facebook.
Thanks to this feature, within minutes of your pet going missing you’ can’ll have a search party of hundreds looking for your pet.
Call Privacy
Instead of displaying your phone number for the world to see (like a traditional engraved tag), Crumb tags utilise the same technology that big companies like Uber and Deliveroo use to keep the owner’s phone number private.
When a member of the public clicks the “Call Owner” button on the online pet profile, it calls a private number which puts you through to the owner but never reveals their real number.
The owner can see the callers number, but their is kept completely private. This is a huge step up from a standard pet tag, whilst still providing all of the functionality.
Snout ID
This is the most impressive feature of the Crumb smart tag.
Dog noses are completely unique – the bumps and ridges are different on every single dog and are the same from the age of 2 months old, just like your fingerprint. Crumb have taken this and created the technology to turn a close-up picture of your dogs nose into a digital noseprint. In the future, if someone were to scan your dog’s nose using the same technology, it would recognize your dog and provide the same information that the Crumb tag QR code does.
Even if an evil dog thief were to remove their collar and microchip, your dog would forever be tied to you through their unique noseprint. Truly revolutionary!
How much does it cost?
You can order up to 5 crumb tags for free, all you need to pay is the postage and packing cost of £3.
As per the Crumb website, the free tags give you the online pet profile at no extra cost. You can update the information on the tags at any time, like when someone else is looking after your pet.
To enable the other features of the service, upgrade to Premium. It only costs £4.95 per month. For multiple tags, upgrade to Premium Plus, which costs £6.95 per month. This means if you have 5 dogs it will only cost you £1.40 per month per pet.