PAWZ: A community-based navigation app for you and your pooch

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to ensure a stress-free walk? One during which you encountered none of your dog’s triggers?

Snap on the leash. Walk out the door. Relax and enjoy the day.

No need to scan the surroundings for potential hazards or engage in tactical evasive maneuvers. Can I make it around the corner without him seeing the cat? If I cross the street now, we can avoid that pizza crust. How about we break into a jog and reverse direction to sidestep the mail carrier?

And, despite your best efforts, you still have a few unavoidable run-ins.

I have the answer. PAWZ.

That’s right an app to make your worries a thing of the past.

Much like the popular driving app WAZE, which promises to help you “outsmart traffic every day,” PAWZ would promise a trigger-free route, calculated each time you head out and updated with information provided by users like you.

I envision it having a menu of options from which to select your dog’s triggers:

• Mail trucks,
• motorcycles,
• scooters,
• cats,
• dogs out walking,
• dogs in their front yard,
• discarded pizza crusts
• discarded bones
• disgusting bits of wadded up paper

It could even provide for seasonal issues:

• rock salt in the winter
• poison ivy in the fall.

And, of course, no app would be complete without allowing you to program in some of your own pet peeves:

• dead animals [See “Tis the Season and In My Own Voice #11: A Classic Case of Bait and Switch]
• that neighbor from whom you borrowed the weed whacker you never returned.

Keep watch for our Go Fund Me campaign to turn this vision into reality.