Give the dog a phone!

London: Does your chihuahua crave a chinwag or the Yorkie want to yak, the greyhound needs to gossip and the corgi loves a chat? Lonely dogs could soon be able to call their absent owners using a new device invented by animal-tech scientists in Britain and Finland, they said on Wednesday.

The DogPhone works when the pet shakes a ball fitted with an accelerometer, which triggers a nearby laptop to make a video call to the owner’s device. It was invented by the University of Glasgow’s Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, with help from her labrador Zack, and colleagues from Aalto University in Finland.