  Alexa Skills are used for a variety of daily routines and purposes, but
little research has focused on a key part of many people's daily lives: their
pets. We present a systematic review categorizing the purposes of 88 Alexa
Skills aimed at pets and pet owners and introduce a veterinary perspective to
assess their benefits and risks. We present 8 themes of the purposes for Skills
aimed at pets and their owners: Calming, Animal Audience, Smart Device,
Tracking, Training and Health, Translator, Entertainment/Trivia, and Other -
Human Audience. Broadly, we find that these purposes mirror the purposes people
have for using Alexa overall, and they largely are supported by veterinary
evidence, though caution must be used when Skills relate to animal health. More
collaboration between Conversational Agent researchers and animal scientists is
called for to better understand the efficacy of using Alexa with pets.
