Horowitz, who runs the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College and is the author of “Inside of a Dog,” grounds her work in trying to see the world from a dog’s point of view. And from that vantage point, she said, the Dog Parker looks like a dog.

She questions whether the Dog Parker is “safe,” as advertised. “It’s safe because the dog’s locked up, but that’s purely from the human point of view,” she says. Most dogs, she said, would likely feel trapped.

And there’s also the problem of the box’s mostly blocked views. “If there’s any sound, they can’t see what’s going on,” Horowitz said. “Dogs look; they don’t sit with their backs to something.”