Explore: Digital Map of Dog Health & Wellness

What have we learned so far?

Pro tip: click on the charts to learn more.

Puppies sleep way less than human babies

Human newborns need 16 to 20 hours of sleep per day, whereas puppies only require 11 to 13 - which means they can spend even more time making our lives awesome!

Maltese dogs are restless during?fireworks

Please pay special attention to them. On the other end of the spectrum among popular breeds, Beagles and Golden Retrievers seem to be pretty calm during pyrotechnic celebrations. Overall, bigger dogs tend to be less fireworks-phobic.

Puppies are nearly twice as active as adult dogs

Activity decreases dramatically from puppy to adult age. So if your puppy is keeping you running, enjoy it! He’ll slow down in a few months.

Vizslas, Spaniels and Terriers require lots of activity

...as high as 7-11K BarkPoints per day. These pups demand of their owners a special commitment to an active lifestyle. Among other popular breeds, Cocker Spaniels (9K) are more active than Beagles (7K) and Golden Retrievers (6K).

Worldwide, our favorite?time to walk our?dogs is 6pm

Afternoon walks are twice as intense as morning walks. Dogs get big morning walks at 8am in Singapore and 7am in Australia, whereas dogs in Great Britain can’t resist a little lunch break. Not many other countries can pull off the midday walk like the UK, both on weekdays and weekends.

Puppies have the most trouble sleeping at night

If you have trouble sleeping and need a dog who can settle down all night, please consider dogs of adult or senior age.

Osteoarthritis typically reduces your dog's activity by 30%

Among adults and seniors, the drop in activity floats between 20% and 40% depending on the weight group. The impact of arthritis is significant and it's no surprise that researchers are so focused on creating new products that may improve these pups’ lives.

Dogs in?Massachusetts are crazy active

Among other large U.S. states, New York, Colorado and California follow closely, whereas Florida and Pennsylvania fall behind.

Worldwide, dogs are more active on weekends

Saturday is the day of the week when dogs are most active. Sunday comes in a close second, and Friday third. We need each other to be healthy, so more time together means more walks for both of us.

Senior dogs are equally active, regardless of size

After a certain age, activity levels align pretty well, and size becomes less of a factor. This is particularly interesting given that small size puppies are twice as active as extra large puppies.

Puppies are most active between age?3-6?months

During that time, puppies are over twice as active as all the other dogs out there. Learning and exploring takes a lot of energy!

Switzerland has the most active dogs in the world

Europe takes the crown hands down in this category. Pups in Great Britain, Germany, Finland, Ireland, France and Italy also enjoy a highly active lifestyle.

Golden Retrievers enjoy a high quality of sleep

That's one of many reasons why they're such a popular breed. If you have trouble sleeping, please consider breeds such as Siberian Husky, Boxer, Golden Retriever, Labrador Retriever and many others.

The time has come for more precise feeding

The range of a dog's daily activity is extremely wide. This means that we need to start adjusting food consumption to activity and target weight. For example, to maintain his weight, your dog is allowed to eat a higher amount of food when you go on a 3-hour hike together vs. when he's home alone all day.

Dogs are champions of gender equality

Across all weight and age groups, boys and girls rack up a similar number of points and enjoy a comparable lifestyle. Not only do our dogs teach us love and loyalty, but also gender equality!

Meet some of the leaders who shaped our vision

Leveraging the dog-owner relationship with a focus on monitoring the pet's physical activity is highly innovative. Platforms like FitBark have the potential to get both pets and people moving together and improve health outcomes for all.

Brian C. Clark, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Ohio Musculoskeletal & Neurological Institute / Ohio University

FitBark is not only an?exceptionally powerful tool for researchers and veterinarians. It's also?designed and priced so?all dog owners have access to clear answers about the health of their pets.

Wayne Carter, DVM, PhD, DACVIM

President & CEO / Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute

We have been using FitBark to to manage dogs with generalized anxiety along with a nutraceutical diet (Forza10 Behavioral?or?Armonia) and a correct therapy. We are delighted with the quality of FitBark's?data and?how easy it is to access the information we need to run our studies.

Prof. Raffaella Cocco, Dr. Sara Sechi, Dr. Alessandro Di Cerbo

Department of Veterinary Medicine, Pathology and Veterinary Clinic Section / University of Sassari

FitBark has been a great company to collaborate with on our FDA-registered INAD research trial on dogs with chronic allergic dermatitis. They assisted us with data analysis and worked with the dog owners to ensure that our data collection went smoothly. What a great team! Thank you, FitBark!

Mark L. Weiss, PhD

Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine / Kansas State University

The FitBark is an outstanding clinical research tool for continuous, objective and non-invasive monitoring of activity; it is portable, interfaced to smartphones and web dashboards and very affordable. Notably, it provides activity data during the day and sleep patterns during the night, facilitating evaluation of effects of a variety of... Read More

Dan Simionescu, Ph.D.

Harriet and Jerry Dempsey Professor of Bioengineering / Clemson University

I think the activity devices like FitBark are going to be incredibly important for pet owners on a number of levels to ensure that their pets get adequate exercise and that they themselves are, too.

Rebecca Johnson, PhD, RN, FAAN, FNAP

Director of Research Center for Human-Animal Interaction / University of Missouri

Diggin'?for more? Meet Explore.

When we talk about health baselines, we’ve done a fantastic?job at mapping what health looks like for humans, but what about dogs? Nobody has ever described?dog?health, sleep, wellness and behavior at scale. Until now.

Say hello to FitBark Explore. Each of our dogs contributes to helping advance science and better understanding dog health. We’ve built Explore in collaboration with researchers from 100+ universities and research institutions worldwide. With a doggie user base from 140+ countries that includes 300+ breeds?and lots of beautiful mutts, we are more thankful than ever.

To show our gratitude, we are publicly sharing the wealth of doggie data we have acquired, for truly unprecedented insights into canine health and wellness. For the very first time, the detailed base of knowledge our participating dogs are creating every day by wearing their FitBark Health Monitor is available to everyone in a new, public, interactive tool that we called FitBark Explore.

You can browse?FitBark Explore below (the tool will display correctly only if you access this page?from a desktop computer). Make sure to click through the tabs and let us know if you find it?useful!