You left at eight. It's now eleven, you're in a meeting you can't leave, and some part of your brain is in your hallway wondering whether the dog has settled or is standing at the door where you left him.
This is one of those problems where the honest answer is layered. Some of it is solved by fifteen pounds of hardware. Some of it isn't solved by hardware at all.
First: what are you actually trying to find out?
People say “check on my dog” and mean three different things.
- Is he safe? Has he got into something, is he stuck, is he overheating.
- Is he distressed? Barking, pacing, scratching at doors, not settling.
- Do I just miss him? Which is a real reason, and worth naming, because it changes what's worth spending.
The first two are answered by seeing the room. The third is answered by seeing him — which is a different and harder problem, because dogs move and rooms don't.
The option that costs nothing
Before buying anything: an old smartphone propped against a stack of books, running any free camera app, on the charger, pointed at the room he settles in. This genuinely works. It's how a lot of people discover their dog sleeps for six hours and the anxiety was theirs, not his.
Two catches. It needs to stay on the charger, and it shows one fixed angle. If he sleeps out of frame, you learn nothing.
A fixed pet camera
Typically £30–£80. Wide lens, night vision, an app, usually two-way audio. Better than a propped-up phone in three ways: it's designed to run permanently, the lens is wider, and the low-light performance is built for a dark hallway rather than a lit room.
The limitation is the same one the phone has. It sees one corner of one room. If your dog moves between rooms — and most do — you get an empty sofa and no information.
The thing nobody tells you about two-way audio
It can make things worse. For a dog with separation anxiety, hearing your voice from a box when you aren't there can restart the distress cycle rather than settle it. Some dogs are fine. Some hunt the room for you. Try it once while you're standing outside the front door and watch what happens before you rely on it.
Cameras that dispense treats
£100–£150 buys a fixed camera that also flings a biscuit. It's genuinely useful for one thing: giving a dog a reason to associate your absence with something good, which is the foundation of most separation-anxiety training.
It is not useful as a feeding solution, and it doesn't fix the fixed-angle problem.
Cameras that move
This is the newest category and the most expensive — a camera on wheels you drive from your phone, so you go and find the dog instead of hoping he walks into shot. Ours is Zivol Roam, and it exists precisely because the fixed-angle problem is the one people complain about most.
Be clear-eyed about it: it solves “I can't see him”. It does not solve separation anxiety, it can't let him out, and it needs floor space and a home without too many thresholds. If your dog reliably sleeps in one spot, a £40 fixed camera tells you everything a moving one would, for a fifth of the price.
And one thing we can't tell you about our own: we don't currently publish where Roam's video is stored, because we don't yet have a straight answer from the manufacturer. We've asked. When we have it, it goes on the product page. Until then, hold us to exactly the same question as everyone else — see below.
The option that isn't a camera
If what you're finding out is that he's distressed for six hours, no camera fixes that. A midday dog walker is roughly £10–£15 a visit, daycare £20–£35 a day, and a neighbour with a key is free. For a dog who genuinely can't cope alone, that's the answer, and buying a camera instead is buying a better view of a problem you've decided not to solve.
Plenty of people end up with both: someone comes at lunchtime, and the camera is how you check they came.
What to actually look for when you watch
Most people watch for the wrong thing — they check whether he looks sad. Better signals:
- Does he settle within 30 minutes? Some initial unrest is normal. Continuing past half an hour is the flag.
- Is the barking triggered or constant? Barking at the postman is a dog. Barking at nothing for an hour is distress.
- Where does he settle? By the door is different from on his bed.
- Has he drunk anything? Easy to see, easy to miss.
Two practical things people get wrong
Upload speed, not download. Video from your house to your phone uses your upload bandwidth, which on most home connections is a fraction of the download figure. If your video stutters, that's usually why.
Where the footage goes. Before you put a camera in your home, find out whether it records to the device, to an SD card, or to somebody's cloud — and if it's a cloud, whose, where, and for how long. This is a fair question to ask any manufacturer, and a straight answer is a reasonable thing to expect. If you can't get one, that tells you something.
So, briefly
Old phone if you want to know today whether this is even a problem. Fixed camera if he stays in one room. Treat camera if you're doing anxiety training. Moving camera if the not-seeing-him is the actual complaint. A person at lunchtime if what you learn is that he isn't coping — because that's the one a camera can show you and can't solve.