Dogs are the mother of invention

I used to say I get my best ideas while walking to the bathroom (this is at work, where the nearest bathroom takes the better part of a minute to reach). Nowadays, I seem to get my best ideas while taking my dog to the bathroom (that is, the dog bathroom, a.k.a the great outdoors). There isn't a walk that goes by where I'm not suddenly pointing my finger to the heavens and exclaiming, "Wouldn't it be great if there was..." usually followed by some fantastical invention that would make dog ownership easier.

Here are some tools for dog owners that, if someone just had the technology and I just had the money, would make my dogs more like my best friends and less like my worst frenemies.

The automatic fur remover

This is the first dog-related invention I ever dreamed up. Between covering up my couches to keep the dog fur off in case of guests, to buying coats to match those of my dogs, to being unable to fall asleep at night thanks to the wisps of dog fur dangling off the blanket into my face, to washing and folding my clothes inside out to prevent them from picking up fur during the laundering process, dog fur is a constant source of struggle in my life. While I beg my boyfriend to brush his dogs at least once a week, he never actually does, so it would sure be nice if we had something that would do it for us...or at least, remove the shed hair from everything it lands on. We have an automatic dog-fur remover for the floor (it's our robotic vacuum cleaner!), but wouldn't it be great if there was something I could just set on top of the bed and let do its thing? Maybe a little box that I could just drop a shirt into and have all the dog hairs meticulously sucked off?

The automatic leash detangler

The catch-22 of dog walking is, if you don't put your dog on a leash, he'll run away, but if you do put your dog on a leash, he'll get it tangled. Around everything, but most annoyingly, under his legs approximately every five steps, which will cause him to slow down and attempt to walk sideways, or just plain fall over. Wouldn't it be great if there was just some kind of tool that would keep the leash out from under the dog's legs at all times?

The dog force field

Better yet, wouldn't it be great if there was some kind of force field you could turn on to keep your dog in your vicinity, so you didn't need a leash at all? Not only would this solve the leash-around-the-legs issue, but it would also prevent other mishaps such as the dreaded walking the leash around the table in a spiral until dog is trapped one inch from the table leg but can't figure out how to unwind again,  and the infamous two dogs meeting each other and walking under and around each other's leashes, forcing the owners to do a little dance and/or pseudo-handshake to get them separated again. My boyfriend tells me there is some sort of shock collar you can get to keep your dog nearby, but I think a force field sounds much more humane and way cooler.

A typical dining-out leash situation

The indoor dog toilet

One of the grossest things about having dogs is having to pick up their poop with your hands. Even cat owners get a scoop to go with their poop, so why do dog owners have to go around fondling it like coprophiliacs? In fact, why do pet owners have to clean up poop at all? I can't believe, after so many millennia of living hand-in-paw with companion animals, and so many centuries of indoor plumbing, we still haven't invented a surface that would appeal to a dog yet still enable us to flush its waste away with the flick of a finger. This would undoubtedly be the greatest dog invention of all...but if someone made it a reality and I never had to walk my dog again, how would I get any more of these marvelous ideas?