Patent ID: 8588968

Claim:
A method for remotely dispensing a pet treat using a Internet-accessible pet treat dispensing apparatus, the pet treat dispensing method comprising the following steps: (1) providing at a pet site at least one Internet-accessible pet dispensing apparatus comprising: (a) a treat dispensing unit comprising a slidable delivery plate, a stationary base plate below the delivery plate, and a mechanism for sliding the delivery plate over the base plate; (b) a control circuit electronics portion attached to the treat dispensing unit, the control circuit electronics portion being in communication with the mechanism for sliding the delivery plate and with a router or a local computer at the pet site, the router or local computer being in communication with at least one remote Internet-accessible electronic device; and (c) at least one video camera portion in communication with the local computer or the control circuit electronics portion; (2) providing a user-accessible webpage or website that can be viewed using the local computer or the at least one Internet-accessible electronic device; (3) displaying a prompt on the webpage or website for inputting user information to the website; (4) displaying a control block on the webpage or website, the control block comprising a treat button for dispensing the pet treat from the treat dispensing unit; (5) initiating a video camera view from the at least one video camera portion on the display on the local computer or the at least one Internet-accessible device; (6) displaying at least one delay button on the control block for delaying the pet treat until a specified time if the at least one delay button is selected; and (7) once the treat button has been selected, prompting a signal to be sent to the control circuit electronics portion to initiate the mechanism for sliding the delivery plate, followed by automatically dispensing the pet treat from the treat dispensing unit.