I enjoy taking my dog out on walk where she can run free and as I live in the country, we are lucky enough to have lots of scenic walks nearby where she can do just that. Recently, I have seen a few missing posters and heard some stories of dogs going missing in a nearby forest and local areas where dog walkers like to go. I am considering buying a tracker and clipping it to her collar so when we are out, I can make sure she stays close and I know where she is. Has anyone had experience of this? Any recommendations of a particular brand? Thanks Gem x
REad carefully at the device site. Those little tags you clip to a collar are not good for a dog who really travels. One I checked out only works within 100 feet (so my dog could be lost at the end of my back yard) AND they depend on other people also having the app on their phone. A real GPS tracking collar, such as a friend put on his coon hounds, looks like an E-collar and would set me back about $600.00.
I personally wouldn't want to be in a situation where I felt the need to use one. That is, if I didn't trust my dogs to stay close, they would be on a long line.
I agree with @snowbunny. Our rescue dog Charlie USED to be an absconder so we trained, trained, trained his recall whilst he was on a long line for 3 years which saved his life. A tracker won't. I know someone who uses one on his absconding Labrador, the Labrador still absconds whilst he watches on his phone xx
Garmin makes units that do what you want, but they are expensive. My dogs stay close enough that I don't worry about it, but I have been around some dogs that might benefit from one of these. A couple of our friends have "Whistle" activity monitors on their dogs, which will also give location, but they depend on Cell Coverage to get the message back to you. The Garmin units are independent of cell coverage.
@Ski-Patroller This won't stop a dog from running away or getting lost. By the time the owner has managed to get to the location the dog will be long gone. I would save the money invest in a whistle and Total Recall at around £20. Training is the only way.
Garmin units are mostly used on hunting dogs, especially hounds that range widely. People who hunt with hounds often want to go to the dog, rather than have the dog come back. Might be useful for Flock Protection dogs (Komondors, Great Pyrenees Wolf Hounds etc) as well since they operate autonomously. I suppose it It could be useful with bird dogs that range widely and get distracted as well. You can track the dog continually in real time with it, but at about $800 it a very expensive solution for a problem that most of us should not have. Incidentally I have a few of the TrackR devices for finding car key etc. It is useless for keys, much less for a missing dog. If you can find the TrackR you can find the keys/dog etc.
One day, we had a hunter crossing our land with seven dogs. They were all wearing radio collars and he was proudly showing off his hand-held device which showed them all. Except, he had no idea how to read it and thought one of his dogs was pretty much 180 degrees to where it actually was from him.
