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Day 01 – 14 May 2018, Monday
Thoughts before getting the leash… Before meeting the Paws Love It team today to start the GO Leah trial, I was pretty apprehensive about whether it would be hard to use since it was promoted to have so many different functions and I had assumed the leash would have many different buttons I would have to memorize to use it well. Also, even though I had heard of PETKIT and the app, I also thought it would be difficult to use (especially because I tend to find it difficult to use products that require an app to maximize their function). I tried my luck to win the leash trial for the Mother’s Day IG contest because I had previously done this other promotional survey where we could share our preferences and opinions for functions in a leash, so I was curious and really happy when Paws Love It contacted me to try it out!

During the explanatory introduction by the Paws Love It team… I was extremely appreciative of the fact that the team came all the way down to Tampines to pass us the leash, because previously when we did win IG contests or requested for sample products, most companies always asked us to go down to their company to take from them during a limited specific timing. Joy and her colleague who came down to pass me the leash were very friendly, and they patiently introduced me to the PETKIT App and how to set up with Zeddy’s information including his age, weight and breed type. They also showed me how to pair the leash as an active device into the app, and introduced me to other products under PETKIT that I had previously heard of but hadn’t found out enough information about. In particular, the team showed me the Health Feeding function, where I could see that Zeddy was classified as “Fatty” (hahaha oops!) because he was slightly overweight given his breed – and how I could calculate a suggested food quantity based on the app’s information which could be corrected based on the type of food he regularly consumes and its nutritional content. Previously when I wanted to calculate this, I would only get a estimated quantity based on a rough estimate across various websites, so this function was definitely very interesting and useful for me. They also walked me through how to use the GO Leash and its basic functions, such as how to set the daily walk target, turn on the torchlight, GPS tracking, and tried out how it would vibrate if my phone rang. This explanatory session was really crucial for me because I got to learn how to use the leash and the PETKIT App!

Using the GO Leash for our first ever walkie!

We went for a short afternoon walk due to the hot sun, and it was a really exciting experience to use it for the first time, because I felt so high-tech all of a sudden haha! I was impressed by the ability of the leash to capture the small details of our walking route such as the turns that we made along the way, as well as the origin and destination of the route. One main thing I noticed while using the leash was how light the handle was – in fact it is even lighter than my existing leash; so it was really very effortless to hold it.
           
After we finished our walk, I opened the app to check out how it recorded our first walk, and I really liked the simple interface which provides all the important information of the total time, distance and the overall route taken in a quick glance. The only thing I wasn’t too sure about was why there was a “Kelvin tang” below my total timing but I’m assuming it is a named location (but who named it? Hahaha!).  After clicking back, I was directed to this page which provided me with how much longer I had to walk to reach my daily target of 2 hours, as well the total time and total distance we had covered so far. Having the total time is really good for Zeddy, because seeing that we have yet to complete our usual walk duration makes me more motivated to walk him instead of slacking off and bringing him on a short walk just because I feel lazy. I was playing around with the leash while on the walk, and accidentally turned it off so there were two walks recorded here! Again, who is naming the place “Sharomar Enterprises” we walk around hahaha?!

Heading for our evening walkies!

We were anticipating our first walk to finally check out how the light band would work! I didn’t know that we could adjust the light band hours to turn it on initially – but instead I assumed that it was detected through light sensor of the surroundings. After playing around with the app, I realized I could turn it off even at night by changing the option within the app. It was also cool to see that there were three different light modes, but I eventually decided on sticking with the always on mode (admitted the flashing one gave me a headache and I was also slightly worried that it would affect Zeddy’s eyesight if the light kept flashing non-stop). For today, we went for two separate walks – one between Temasek Polytechnic and Tampines West Community Club (while we were waiting for Zeddy’s papa to finish work at TP), and another around our house downstairs.

                      

We also met one of our neighbours who was really impressed by the lit-up leash and we showed her some of the functions, though she did share that she felt it was too troublesome to learn how to use (as she is a 50+ year old lady who doesn’t really use her phone much)! Because of the leash, we felt that Zeddy had more people coming over to say hi and give him lots of pats (which he absolutely loves!) hahaha!

         

Final tally for Day 1 Trial: we completed 120% of our target! It was really satisfying to look at this daily tracker at the end of the day to see the total time and total distance we had covered together, along with the percentage level of how much we had completed. I also liked that we could review our walks individually to take a look at the route for each walk, as well as the separate details rather than only getting an accumulated record.

Day 02 – 15 May 2018, Tuesday
Night walkie to Bedok Reservoir! Instead of doing our usual 2 walks today, we decided to set aside 2 hours at night to bring Zeddy for a jog/walk from our place (Tampines West) to Bedok Reservoir. Because we didn’t walk him for the whole day, Zeddy was pretty excited and became tuggish as he tried to pull us towards the reservoir. I noticed that the leash was slightly elastic when he was pulling, which was good because it provided some tension whenever Zeddy pulled too much and he would revert back to walking properly next to us.

           

During this walk, we jogged together with Zeddy for brief periods of the journey, and I discovered my favourite feature of the GO leash! It’s donut-shaped design fit easily around my wrist, such that I could move my arms relatively freely while still holding on to the leash. This was also came in useful when I had to reply some urgent messages on my phone, so I slipped the leash around my hand and could freely use both hands to type into my phone.

           

Trial Day 2 – COMPLETED with great results! Not only did we manage to walk for 2 hour 40 min, we also covered a long distance because of the jogs we did during the journey! This tracker is also useful because it allows us to swipe to the previous day to compare how we fared. I also think it could be used as a distance/timer calculator if we were to use it while running Zeddy and preparing for a marathon!

 

Day 03 – 16 May 2018, Wednesday
I had a long day at work today and only reached home at 10pm – usually on such occasions, we would skip on Zeddy’s walk because we felt too tired and lazy to bring him down on the walk. When I opened the app and saw the tracking as zero though, I felt really guilty (because the 0% is just staring back at you in the app hahaha) for neglecting Zeddy simply because I felt lazy. We headed down for a quick night walk, and walked around till midnight – and the happiness I felt from Zeddy was really worth it.

I think the truth is, without the GO Leash and PETKIT App, we would definitely have skipped today’s walk and not thought very much about it. But we were really motivated when we looked at the 0%, and then we felt bad for often prioritizing our laziness over Zeddy’s happiness. Even though we only completed 84% of the walk, it felt like we did achieve a better target of learning how to love Zeddy better, and bringing him down for a walk because it really brings him a lot of joy! (Maybe one suggestion we would like to make is that the App could send us a reminder to tell us that we have not yet walked our dog yet, just to act as a friendly reminder at the back of our heads!)

 

Day 04 – 17 May 2018, Thursday
Back to normal walkies for today!
The one very strange thing that happened today was this distance calculation – we went to the playground downstairs and there were short periods where we didn’t move much, but yet when we opened our app to check upon getting home we saw this! We are guessing it might be because some parts of the playground had shelter, which might have affected the location tracking of the leash.

           

Trial Day 4 final tally – we completed 127% of our target timing! Other than the slight glitch of the distance tracking, everything else worked fine for today and we managed to cover 2 separate walks in the day and night each! Overall for the past 4 days, the GO Leash has been extremely satisfying to use and also really user-friendly!

 

Day 05 – 18 May 2018, Friday

This period coincided with a busy work schedule, so I only came home past 9pm today again – so we had a leisurely night walk for today!
We used this interactive poll on Zeddy’s Instagram! Seems like most people thought we could achieve our target 2 hours~
During this period, we have gotten quite a few messages from our instafurriends expressing surprise that we really do take Zeddy to walk daily. We heard from some of them that even when they don’t have work, they only bring their dogs down for 10 to 15 minutes, once a day for a quick walk – and some of them said that they did not feel that this leash was suitable for their walking regiments. I’m not sure how but maybe there could be other functions that suit owners who don’t walk their dog as much hehe.

I also experienced the leash “ringing” when I had to receive a few work calls during our walk! Originally, I temporarily forgot about the function and was wondering why the leash was suddenly vibrating even though I had not turned it off/on oops! This function turned out to be useful because I had to subsequently take 3 different phone calls during our walk and the leash alerted me to the calls because I usually put my phone on silent non-vibrate mode!

Trial Day 5 – we succeeded in walking for 2 hours! As the distance suggests, we walked pretty slowly today haha, with quite a number of rest stops. I also noted that the problem of distance tracking that we experienced yesterday was no longer there, even though we did go to sheltered areas on our walk as there were puddles of water in the open areas.
I didn’t take a screenshot, but the App also indicated that I needed to charge the leash (which was down to 20% from memory)! I’m pretty impressed by the leash’s battery life because we used it for so many hours, and only charged it periodically over the past 5 days and yet the battery life lasted for pretty long!

 

Day 06 – 19 May 2018, Saturday
Headed around the neighbourhood for our night walk today as it had rained for much of the afternoon. The torch light was really useful as we could shine on the floor and benches to check for water puddles, leftover rainwater and snails!
                      

           
I also particularly like the soft material on the inside of the leash where we have to hold, making it comfortable and easy to hold the leash!

Trial Day 6 – 116% achieved!

 

Day 07 – 20 May 2018, Sunday
Lazarus Island Adventure!

It’s Sunday FUNday! We headed to Lazarus Island today with the GO Leash – though I did check to find out from Joy that the leash is not waterproof and it would be advisable to wrap the leash up in a plastic to protect it from getting wet. Thank goodness I checked, because unfortunately it rained today and we had to run through the rain haha!
                      
Even though I kept the leash turned on all the way till we were about to reach the island, the route was not recorded at all when we reviewed the details at the end of the day. Before turning off the leash, we checked that the route and timing was logged in before turning off my phone (as we did not have reception on St. John and Lazarus Islands), but the trip was not recorded in the end. I checked with Joy – who informed me that the leash requires active internet connection for the GPS to track the route! Thank goodness I took the screenshots because it’s actually really cool to see our route into the sea hehe (it reminds us of Pokemon!). I’m really sorry for not being able to provide any more photos for today even though we had thought that we could capture really good photos and screenshots of the leash in use when we went on this adventure – but it rained + the leash route was ultimately not recorded.

           

 

Day 08 – 21 May 2018, Monday
Trial Day 8 – headed for a run today with Zeddy, but we didn’t check our phone so we didn’t know that we were just 10 minutes short of our target!

           

But anyway, 92% is still almost there… 😛

 

Day 09 – 22 May 2018, Tuesday
It’s our last day of trial! We brought Zeddy for a mini night pawtoshoot around the neighbourhood, here are some of the best photos!

Overall Reflections: After using the GO Leash for the past 9 days, we have come to really enjoy the experience and how user-friendly it is. The ease of the leash auto-connecting to our phone’s app upon turning it on and off was definitely a plus point, especially since initially I had imagined it might be really hard to learn how to use the leash. (On one occasion, we lent it to my mum to walk Zeddy for a while and even she shared that it was really easy to use – and my mum usually tends to avoid products that include technology haha)! The design of the leash – both the fact that it could easily slip over my wrist and the comfortable inner material made it really comfortable to hold. Even though we only learnt today about the marking function where the map would show the pawprint where Zedy marked (we wished we had found out about this earlier!), it was really cute to see it show up on the map and also helped us to track how many times Zeddy had pooped. We had a lot of fun thinking about how to create cool photos – and we even realized on the last day that we could use the torchlight as a “spotlight” for lighting in photos! The light was amazingly bright enough to provide illumination for Zeddy in the darker spaces (we were in a shelter with no overhead lighting and the nearest light source being quite a distance away), and we think it could probably be used in many other dark, low-light settings especially for us Instagram pet accounts! The only one small gripe we have about the leash is that it is slightly battery-consuming for our handphones, as we need to turn on Bluetooth, Location and 4G to experience the full range of functions the leash has – though we quickly worked our way around it by bringing our portable charger along with us for walks! Overall, we had lots of fun trying out this GO Leash! It also motivated us every day to bring Zeddy for longer and further walks, which made him a happier boy too! Thank you Paws Love It for giving us this change to try out the GO Leash! ☺