If you hire a dog walker, how do you know if he’s out and about with your dog, or just sitting around your pad, watching soaps and raiding the fridge? If you need to find out, and a private dick seems too extreme, the SNIF Tag may be your best bet.

SNIF Tags attach to your dog’s collar, and use motion-sensitive sensors to wirelessly transmit all the pooch action — sleeping, eating, running — to a base station in your home. The tags can even record encounters with other SNIF-equipped dogs. Of course, the tag must be within 80 feet of the base station to transmit information, so it won’t do much good if your hound is sniffing his way through a dog park.

After logging into the SNIF website, you can catch up on your dog’s action remotely, and if he encountered any other SNIF dogs, you can click around to find its owner. Now, if this sounds like a promising way to get a date, might I recommend a Virtual Boyfriend/Girlfriend instead. The tags are undergoing beta trials in Boston and New York, and are due in the spring for around $200.