Video-Based Criterion Validation of a Proprietary Collar-Mounted IMU Step Counter in Dogs

Collar-mounted inertial measurement units (IMUs) offer practical canine activity monitoring, though neck signals only indirectly represent paw-ground contact. This study validated a proprietary collar IMU step counter against manual video annotation using 15 walking/trotting bouts from 11 dogs. The video reference recorded 357 steps versus the IMU's 355. Analysis showed a mean absolute error of 1.60 steps/bout, MAPE of 7.96%, WAPE of 6.72%, and Bland-Altman limits of -4.87 to 4.60 steps/bout. Dog-cluster bootstrapping addressed repeated observations. The strong bout-level agreement supports broader deployment and further validation of collar-mounted step counting.