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Comment by dreamweapon | Hacker News Reader

Is there any evidence the Dog is actually aware that he's "texting (or otherwise sending) a selfie" -- or even knows what a selfie is -- in any meaningful sense?

"How I taught my dog to thwack his paw on a big red button in response to a keyword signal" might be a better title.

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Is that your response when someone has their dog "play dead"?

"Does the dog understand what death is? Is the dog aware of it's own mortality?"

"How I taught my p-zombie to look things up in a giant room filled with books in Chinese, using the Twilio API"

The title doesn't say "How I taught my dog to understand that it is recording and sending a self-portrait."

Does it matter? It's funny/cool whether or not the dog understands what a selfie is.

Parent has a point. If you can teach your dog that the button is a way to communicate with you when you're out of the house, that would be awesome. I suppose something like having a few signs it can hold when pressing the button, maybe? Training that would be incredibly hard, I'm guessing, but if possible, it would be amazing.

Great idea. My original plan envisioned something like:

  - I text into her number while out of the house
  - Twilio sends HTTP request to Arduino 
  - Piezo buzzer sounds 
  - Kaira has to hold the button for X seconds
  - Servo rotates auto treat dispenser

In the end, simplicity won out. That said, those are far from insurmountable challenges.

A friend of mine (Hi Erick!) is working on http://puppod.com/

> In the end, simplicity won out.

But the overly ambitious title remained.

GROAAAAAAN, don't be a sourpuss!

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