Hoboken Dog Owners Chase Prizes in Mile Square Scavenger Hunt

The creators of a new iPhone app that lets you design a digital avatar for your dog, track locations in the neighborhood and across the country where she’s “marked,” and leave messages for other dogs who’ve marked in her territory are promoting their product with a mile square scavenger hunt.

The Sniff and Mark Hoboken Scavenger Hunt, the brainchild of Smart as a Dog, LLC founders Peter and Mike Lipa, kicked off this weekend with a prize drawing and the release of the competition’s first three check-in locations around town.

The four-week scavenger hunt challenges residents and their pups to “mark” at a variety of local pet-centric shops using the company’s free “Sniff and Mark” mobile app to earn digital puzzle pieces that form an historical map of Hoboken.

Dog owners who collect all 12 pieces by “marking” at each of the contest’s nine local sponsors and its three mystery locations will be entered into a drawing for large and small pet-related prizes donated by the event’s sponsors.

In addition to the final prize drawing that concludes the contest, minor drawings will be held weekly to reward scavenger hunt contestants who download the “Sniff and Mark” app or like it on Facebook. The first warm-up drawing, held Friday at midnight, rewarded four new Facebook fans of the mobile app with prizes from Cozy Cuts Pet Grooming, Dog Collar Boutique, Hoboken Dog Wash and PetHub.

Bloomfield resident Peter Lipa, who co-founded Smart as a Dog and designed the “Sniff and Mark” app, said its concept dates back to his childhood.

“In our family and other families in our neighborhood on Long Island, when you’re standing at the corner and your dog is sniffing that hydrant, everyone would tell their kids, ‘He’s leaving a message for the other dogs, he’s reading who was there,’” Lipa said. “It was always, ‘There’s a message there. The dog is interacting somehow, and this is his territory.’ So I remember that since I was a little kid and that’s stayed with me.”

For years, the canine-loving Lipa clan has tracked the states where their pups have marked as part of a friendly familial competition.

“We just used to keep an excel spreadsheet,” Lipa said. “At some point it sort of became obvious that these apps are kind of fun and I started thinking about it and talking with friends.”

Lipa, who has a background in software sales and marketing, said he was sold on the idea of creating a mobile app that functions much like a Foursquare for dogs after talking with a friend who had tracked his dog’s course during a move from Colorado to New Jersey. 

“When he told me that,” Lipa said. “I said, ‘This is going to happen.’”

So he and his brother, Mike, a Hoboken resident, began brainstorming. Neither are programmers so they needed to find someone to build the app and design the artwork while they worked on developing a business and marketing model.

“We started doing that about a year-and-a-half ago and we finally released the app to the app store in December,” Lipa said. “Since my brother lives in Hoboken and there are so many dogs here and we both walk both of our dogs here, we thought this would be a really cool place to do something, to have some sort of event to try to promote the app.”

Hence, the Sniff and Mark Hoboken Scavenger Hunt was born.

Nineteen sponsors, both local and national, have signed on to provide free goodies as scavenger hunt contestant giveaways.

Lipa said he hopes the hunt builds interest in the app, which currently has several thousand users in approximately 36 countries around the world.

He's yet to devise a model to monetize the app — it's free to download and it does not subject users to intrusive pop-ups — but said it would be fantastic if the app took off and he could parlay its success into the creation of more dog-themed mobile phone apps.

“A lot of people like doing stuff that is dog-themed or dog-related,” said Lipa, who aspires to create games where “you don’t have to go and be mean to somebody else” to succeed. “I’ve got a couple other ideas for apps and other things. If we can generate interest for this, we’ll go on and try to go further. We’re hoping that this has a future.”

The Sniff and Mark Hoboken Scavenger Hunt runs until Saturday, Aug. 10. Stay tuned to the "Sniff and Mark" Facebook page for information on giveaways and  clues for locating the hunt's three mystery spots. 

Contest info and Frequently Asked Questions:

The nine local Scavenger hunt sponsors where participants must check in by Saturday, Aug. 10 are as follows:

• Cornerstone Pets
• Hoboken Historical Museum
• Hoboken Dog Wash
• Animal Infirmary of Hoboken
• Cozy Cuts
• Hoboken Unleashed
• Full House Printing
• D's Soul Full Cafe
• Hound Around Dog Walkers