Using Dogster Instant Messaging

Any Plus member that sees that another Plus member is online can click a link to IM them. You will then need to pick which pet of yours you would like to converse for you in the chat and confirm you will adhere to the etiquite rules.

INITIATING A CONVERSATION
  • Use your Pal and Corral list to which of your contacts are online. Click to initiate a chat.
  • Once the chat window opens, to actually initiate the chat you'll need to send your opening message to your pal. Once the first message is sent, the recipient will be invited to chat with you. If the recipient accepts they will be shown the IM window with your first message to which they can reply.
  • Note that sometimes it can take up to 60 seconds for the two-way chat connection to be up and running. Also note that we can never know a member is online. They may have just left their computer. So if they don't respond they may not be there or not able to chat at that time.

SENDING AN INSTANT MESSAGE
  • To send a message type it in the light blue box with the blue border. When ready to send hit the enter/return key or click send.
  • You can make your text bold, italic or underlined, but highlighting your text and clicking 'B', 'I' or 'u'
  • To set your status as 'Away' move the slider (that is to the left of the 'Send' button) to the left. To set it to available slide it to the right
  • To Add emoticons, just click the smiley face and pick which emotion is appropriate

USING VIDEO & AUDIO FEATURES
  • Our IM client is fully video and audio capable. To beam a video of you, insert any webcam into your computer and it will be found by the IM client. To beam audio insert a microphone into your computer.
  • To send and receive video, audio or both, click the 'send a/v' text beneath the send button. the grey video and or audio text beneath the question make. When on, the text will turn green.

OTHER FEATURES
  • You can change your status to away by sliding the bar to the left of the send button. Red means away, green means available.
  • You can enlarge the typing area by dragging up the small grey rectangle that sits above the upper left corner of the typing area
  • To see you list of pal click the button with the circle of dots. It will open you pal page in the main browser window you started from

YOUR PET'S IMAGE
  • Our IM client is only able to support images in JPEG format (or video streams). Unfortunately we are currently unable to support GIFs and Animated GIFs. We are very sorry about this, but due to the underlying technology it is out of our control. If your primary image is an animated image we will search your uploaded photos and show the first image in .jpeg format.

DEALING WITH UNPLEASANTNESS
  • IM conversations are person-to-person private unmoderated conversations. Since this is Dogster we expect that all conversations will be fun and friendly exclusively and always at the agreement of both parties. If either party is disinterested in continuing the conversation or speaking again that should ALWAYS be respected no matter what the reason.
  • You can block a person from IMing you again. Just click the block icon to the left of their picture up top. From that point on the IM tool will not allow any conversations between you and that person.
  • Our sites are family friendly and our civility and etique rules require that all conversations be fun, friendly and informative. IM is never to be used to insult, slight, scream, intimate, bark, growl, snap, or bite anyone ever. There can never be an exception to this rule. If someone has violated your fun use of the site by breaking these or any of our other core civility rules contact HQ. If you are in the middle of the conversation, click 'report conversation' give us any details and we'll be able to review the entire dialogue.
  • For safety reasons we keep transcripts of all conversations for internal purposes so we'll be able to review and confirm and problems.