Do you ever wonder what your dog is trying to tell you, or someone else, when he’s barking madly? It would be interesting if dogs could speak so they could successfully communicate with us and not rely on other means to get what they want. Well, according to the Bow-Lingual, you too can be Dr. Doolittle and understand your canine friend.

The Bow-Lingual is a hand-held electronic device that is supposed to gauge your dog’s mood by listening to its bark. A microphone on the dog’s collar records the bark and an infra-red voice print is then beamed to the owner’s emotion pager. The bark is analyzed and then summarized into one of six emotions: happy, sad, frustrated, on-guard, assertive and needy.

The price tag for this handy little gadget: $99.95 US plus shipping and handling.

We gave a Bow-Lingual to a dog owner who is already in touch with her dog and knows what her dog is trying to communicate to her with her different barks. After using the translator for several weeks our dog owner thought its results were hit and miss and there wasn’t really much consistency.

Off to the doggie park with the Bow-Lingual to see if some random testing with various breeds produced any better results. As much fun as we had with it, we found that it only displayed accurate translations about half the time.

We also asked dog psychologist and author Dr. Stanely Coren what he thought of the Bow-Lingual. He explained that dogs indeed have different barks for communicating different emotions and that it’s not very difficult to get to know your dog’s barks. Typically, a lower pitch will indicate aggression or a threat and a higher pitch is a sign of playfulness or submissiveness. The Bow-Lingual, he thinks, is just an approximation and really a toy to have some fun with.

We agree and thought this was a fun little toy, perhaps a whimsical gift for a dog lover you know. But for $100 is it really worth it? We’re not sure if it’s really able to accurately tell what a dog is trying to say or if it is pure coincidence.

So we give the Bow-Lingual 3 bags out of 5.