Cleverly, it can also be used to set up safe zones and set off an alarm if your dog wanders outside them. Trace the outline of your garden, for instance, and your smartphone will alert you if your dog manages to burrow under the fence and go exploring and tell you exactly where he is on a map.

John Wisbey, co-founder of the firm behind the product, RDTP, told the Telegraph: We see so many unfit and troubled dogs every day and wanted to do something about it.

The company hopes to have the devices on sale by the summer. The Seedrs campaign has already raised 38,000 of the 100,000 needed.

But other similar devices are already on the market.

The FitBark is a small bone-shaped device which clips onto your dogs existing collar, and comes in five colours for $99. At just eight grams its unlikely to hold your dog back and is waterproof so wont go haywire if you take your dog to the beach.

The device syncs with a smartphone but you can also buy an optional $79 Wi-Fi base station that will send data directly to FitBarks servers even if you and your phone are not at home.

Unlike the Dog Tracker Nano the FitBark works on motion sensing only, and not GPS, but is likely to be much cheaper.

And the industry is much bigger than those two products alone. Another firm, Whistle, raised $15m in funding earlier this month on top of a previous round of $10m for its health tracker for dogs.

At the same time it said that it had bought out Snaptracs, a spin-off from computer chip maker Qualcomm, which sells a tracker called Tagg with built-in GPS so you can see exactly where your dog ran.

For those with a higher budget there is also Voyce, which costs $300 but also offers heart rate and respiratory tracking for your dog.

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Is your dog getting enough exercise?