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Reads and the camera
What a read costs you, how long the clip is, why the tags before it change the answer — and every reason one stops, with what to do about each.
Free to use · Live camera reads are on the phone app
The allowance
What a read costs, and when the counter comes back
A read is one live capture going to a model that bills us every time it answers, so it is the one thing every plan meters. Pup gets one a day. Tracker gets three, Whisperer ten, Pack Leader twenty-five. The other thing a plan changes is clip length — five seconds, or ten, or twenty. Everything else about a read is identical on every tier.
The counter resets at midnight UTC — not midnight where you are. Through British Summer Time that is one in the morning; the rest of the year it is midnight on the nose. The daily spin resets on the same clock.
Extra reads are a different thing from the allowance, and they behave differently. A read won on the wheel, or bought with forty bones, is a read for today. At the UTC roll it goes with the counter. Bones themselves keep indefinitely, so an unused forty is not lost — only an unused bonus read is.
Context training spends a read. The eight scenarios under Context training, on the Play tab, are not a simulation — each one records a real clip and sends it off exactly like any other read, which is the whole point of them. On the free plan a scenario is that day's read, so work through them one a day rather than sitting down to do all eight in an afternoon.
The slot is spent before the clip is sent. The server clears the read and takes the slot first, so no clip is ever uploaded against an allowance you do not have. The honest consequence: a read that then fails — the connection drops mid-upload, the model is unreachable — does not hand that slot back. What it does instead is remember the attempt, so you are never charged twice for it. See a read that failed.
Clip length
Five seconds, or ten, or twenty
Five seconds is the free clip and the starting length on every plan. Ten and twenty sit beside it as chips on the aim screen, and they need a subscription — any paid tier, and a Tracker Pass counts for as long as it runs. Tap a longer chip without one and Dogoos opens the plans screen, rather than quietly recording five seconds and letting you believe you got twenty.
Longer is not automatically better. More footage helps when your dog does the interesting thing halfway through, and it makes a bigger video to send off your phone, so a twenty-second read takes noticeably longer to come back than a five — the deadlines behind it scale with the clip for exactly that reason. If the whole tell is over in two seconds, five is the right chip.
What you see is what gets sent. The preview is letterboxed rather than cropped to fill the screen, so the frame on the glass is the frame the model receives. If an ear was outside the preview, it was outside the clip.
“That clip came out too large to send.” Rare, because the recorder is capped well under the size limit, but a long clip of a very busy scene can still reach it. It is not a problem with your account, and retrying at the same length will not help — pick a shorter one.
Context tags
Ten taps that sharpen the answer
Telling Dogoos what just happened sharpens the read, because the same expression means different things in different situations. A dog braced at the bathroom door and a dog braced at the front door look almost identical on video and are not having the same afternoon. So before you record, say which it was — one tap each, as many as apply, none of them compulsory:
Just had a treat · Said “walkies” · Dinner time · About to play · Vet / grooming · Bath time · New person / dog · Someone came home · Just woke up · Loud noise
They travel with the clip and they stay attached to the read afterwards, so the verdict card lists them back to you and your monthly Story picks them up.
If you have turned personalised insights off — it is in Settings, under Privacy & data — the tags stop being sent, along with your dog's profile and their reference photo. The model gets the clip and nothing else. So if you turned it off and the tags look ignored, they are: that is the trade.
Getting a usable clip
What helps, and what stops a read cold
The app's own advice when a read comes back unusable is three things: get them clearly in frame, in good light, and hold steady while the clip records. Let them behave naturally — there is nothing to perform, and a dog being cajoled into a pose is a dog whose body language is now about you.
What helps
- Face and body in frame — the posture carries as much as the face
- Daylight, or a lamp on. A dim room is the most common reason a read is refused
- Holding the phone still — the model picks the keepsake frame out of your clip, and it can only pick a sharp one if the clip has one
- Checking which dog is selected at the top of Home before you tap the paw
- Tagging the context — especially bath time, the vet, and a visitor at the door
- Letting the mic through if you can: vocal tone is one of the three signals
What stops one
- Dog behind the sofa, half out of shot, or filmed from directly behind
- A dark room, a backlit window, a phone being waved about
- Three dogs in frame and no way to tell which one you meant
- No connection — a read is a live call to a server, and it says so plainly
- Camera permission denied. The microphone being denied does not stop a read
The clip does not stay on your phone. It is deleted when the read finishes, whether that read succeeded or failed, and Dogoos does not store it as a video at the other end either. The one image that survives is the keepsake still attached to the read.
Honest by design
“Couldn’t read clearly” is a feature, not a fault
When the model cannot see your dog well enough — too dark, too blurry, out of frame, behind something — it does not present a mood as an answer. It marks the read's quality as insufficient, writes a short reason in its own words, and the app shows a different card altogether: Couldn't read clearly, that reason, and a best-guess chip labelled as exactly that. Two buttons, Try again and Close. No Share, because an uncertain read was never meant to become a post.
The second refusal is the one multi-dog houses meet. Told to read one dog and handed a frame with three, unable to say which is the subject, it abstains rather than averaging two dogs into a verdict that describes neither. Your active dog's profile photo travels with the clip precisely to prevent that, so a dog with a good clear profile picture is much easier to pick out of a crowded hallway.
Both of those are answers, though, and an answer costs a read. We would rather spend it telling you the clip was no good than inventing a mood from a clip nobody could see. Fix the light or the framing and go again — the retry is an ordinary read, so on the free plan it is tomorrow's.
Where a read can end up
- Clip arrivesFive seconds of face, body and sound
- Can it see your dog?Light, framing, and which dog is the subject
- Yes — a moodOne of six, its own confidence, three or four named cues
- No — it says soThe reason in its own words, a best-guess chip labelled as one, and no Share
Camera & microphone
Asked on your first scan, never at startup
Dogoos does not greet a new account with a stack of permission dialogs. The camera and microphone are asked for at the moment you first tap the paw and try to read your dog, which is the only moment the request makes any sense. Health reminders ask when you set one; notifications ask after your first read.
If the camera is refused you get a card headed Camera access needed with a button that asks again. If you have refused it permanently, Android stops showing the system dialog at all — so the same card changes its button to Open Settings and hands you to Android's own settings page. Grant the camera there, then close the read screen and tap the paw again: Dogoos checks the permission when the read screen opens, and nothing re-checks while that card is still sitting on screen. Tapping its button again would only send you back to Android.
The microphone is optional. Deny it and the read still runs, on video alone. You lose one of the three signals, so a dog who is whining or grumbling gives the model less to work with — but nothing breaks. Dogoos asks again the next time you open a read, and the time after that, until Android decides you have refused often enough and stops showing the dialog; from then on every read is video only. To see where you stand without hunting through Android, open Settings → Privacy & data → Camera & microphone. Under Permissions, Camera access and Microphone access each show Allowed, Blocked or Not allowed, and tapping either opens the system page.
When each permission is asked for
- You install itNothing is asked for. Not one dialog
- First paw tapCamera and microphone, at the only moment they make sense
- After your first readNotifications, once there is something to notify you about
- When you set a reminderAlarms — and only then
When it stops
A read that failed, stalled, or saved half-way
Dogoos tries hard not to blame your connection for something that was not your connection. When the server refuses for a reason it understands, it writes its own sentence and the app puts that sentence on the card instead of a generic one. These are the ones you will actually meet, word for word, and what each is telling you:
Nothing in a read is allowed to wait forever. Every step carries a deadline — starting the camera, stopping it, the allowance call, the model call, the upload — and a watchdog sits over the whole attempt in case the individual deadlines somehow all hold. If your read is going to fail, it will fail visibly, and reasonably soon.
An interrupted read is not lost, and not charged twice. If the app closes or the network drops while a read is in flight, the attempt stays open. Open the read screen again and Dogoos picks that exact attempt back up before it starts anything new: if the model had already answered, you get the answer, without spending a second read. If it is still working, you are told so — that is the card headed Let's check that read rather than Hmm, that didn't work. Only a permanent failure closes the attempt off and frees you to start a fresh one.
The last case is the odd one. The verdict card appears the moment the model answers, and the photo and the history row save behind it under a quiet “Saving your keepsake…”. A slow upload delays the keepsake, never the answer. If that save genuinely cannot finish, the card stays on screen and says so — this read couldn't be saved to your history — instead of being swapped for an error. You still get to read the verdict. It just will not appear in history or the album afterwards, so screenshot it if it mattered.
Still stuck
Email a human about it
There is no chat widget, no phone number and no ticket queue. Email is genuinely the whole of it, and the line printed in the app's own help screen is the one we stand behind: our team usually replies within a day.
support@dogoos.com — a read that will not run, a camera that will not open, your account, your data, or a bug. Tell us your dog's name, your plan, roughly when it happened, and what the card on screen said, word for word if you can. Most of those sentences are written for one specific reason each, so the exact wording tells us which case you hit and saves a round trip.
hello@dogoos.com — Kennel and professional plans, press and partnerships.
Questions, answered
The ones people actually ask
Does a failed read still use up my daily read?
It can, and we would rather say so than let you find out. The server takes the slot at the moment it clears the read — before your clip is sent — so nothing is ever uploaded against an allowance you do not have. If the read then fails, that slot is not automatically returned. What you are protected from is paying twice: an interrupted read stays open as an attempt, and the next time you open the read screen Dogoos resumes that same attempt instead of starting a new one. If the model had already answered, you get the answer for the read you already spent.
Does a context-training scenario cost me a read?
Yes. Each of the eight scenarios under Context training records a real clip and runs a real read — that is what makes it training rather than a quiz. On the free plan one scenario is the whole day's allowance, so the honest way through the set is one a day over eight days rather than all eight in one sitting.
Why did it say “couldn’t read clearly”?
Because it could not see your dog well enough to answer honestly — too dark, too blurry, out of frame, behind something — or because several dogs were in shot and it could not tell which one you meant. You get the model's own short reason, a best guess clearly labelled as a guess, and Try again. The fix is nearly always light and framing: face and body in shot, a lamp on, phone held still. It is deliberate behaviour rather than a bug, and the alternative is a confident mood invented from a clip nobody could see.
When does my read come back?
At midnight UTC, not midnight where you are. In the UK that is 1am through British Summer Time and midnight the rest of the year. Bonus reads — from the daily spin, or bought with bones — are for the day you got them and are cleared at the same roll. The bones themselves keep.
Why is the free clip only five seconds?
Because the clip is the expensive part. Five seconds is enough for the model to read a face, a posture and a voice together, and it is what keeps one read a day free forever rather than free for a fortnight. Ten- and twenty-second clips come with any paid plan, including a Tracker Pass, for the moments that take longer to unfold.
Can I take a read in my browser?
No — live camera reads are a phone feature, and the web app says so rather than failing quietly. It opens your account on any screen for mood history, the Health Hub, the album and Ask Rex; capturing a read, picking photos and buying a plan stay on the phone.
The camera preview is black. Now what?
Something else is holding the camera, or a previous session never released it. Close any other app that uses the camera, then back out of the read screen and tap the paw again — there is no Try again button while you are still aiming, and a fresh entry to the screen opens a new camera session rather than reusing the stuck one. If it persists, quit Dogoos entirely and reopen it; if it still persists, email us and say which phone you are on.
How accurate is a read?
Every read carries the model's own confidence number, set honestly and allowed to come back low, plus a separate score for how much the face, the body and the sound each contributed to it. What you will not find is a measured accuracy rate, because the study that would produce one has not been run. How a read works has the long version, refusals included.
Is a read veterinary advice?
No. A read is an estimate of your dog's likely emotional state from observable body language — insight, not diagnosis — and the model is instructed never to give a veterinary diagnosis. If something about your dog worries you, that conversation belongs with a qualified vet, and the Health Hub exists to give you the dated notes to walk in with.
Good light, whole dog in frame.
That’s most of it.
Open the web app 🦴
Free to use · Live camera reads are on the phone app