I have two Australian Shepherds who sometimes like to "explore" when unsupervised for more than 5 minutes.
The set up is fairly straightforward. The app uses old satellite images for my area, making orientation a little difficult, but I'm in a rural area and it's not PetFon's fault.
I was skeptical about the collar attachment - I had these dogs lose tags secured on a key ring (later replaced with ones that bolt on collar) - but it has surprisingly proven to be good.
Everything (controller and tracker) needs to be close to each other (feet) to connect easily. My home is rural, with 30,000 acres of surrounding woodlands. The resulting range in my area is pretty small most of the time, e.g., about 1/10 mile. I immediately thought I was going to return THE GPS because I thought it would only be useful for city dogs. This finding was admittedly a disappointment, BUT I LEARNED THAT LIMITATION DOESN'T MAKE THE TRACKER USELESS FOR COUNTRY DOGS, because the GPS will connect when you get within range of your lost dog. That's what happened to me this morning.
One of my dogs went missing yesterday afternoon. He was wearing his tracker and battery was at 100% that morning. By the time I had my phone out to look for him, he was disconnected, i.e., more that 1/10 of a mile away. That was a huge disappointment, but I kept the controller and phone in my pocket the whole time I looked for him. He spent the night lost, and I resumed searching the thick woods at first light. I started making concentric circles, and his GPS finally reconnected about half a mile from home (see left photo above, dog icon is where I picked him up on GPS, the two red circles to the right are my home). I called him and he did not come, so I walked to his location. The poor boy was terrified - he was lost in the woods! And his tracker battery was at 20% after approximately 24 hours (which I found to be impressive). This story is the reason this product gets four stars - while it doesn't work as well as I want, it works well enough to find my dog with some quick (within 24 hours) search work.
One thing I definitely DO NOT LIKE - it appears you can only be logged into one tracking device (phone) at a time. Do you have two people to increase your search area? Not with GPS you don't. I'm also not sure if it would work without a mobile signal, and my area is pretty spotty. Luckily the place where I found my dog had one bar of signal.
Another thing is the unit of purchase. I could buy one dog, or three dogs. I would have appreciated a two dog option.
About the audio - you can (and I have) record a message to play to your dog. It is not live audio, and it is not two-way audio. My dogs seem to find my message of ""Name", come home" emanating from their collar confusing, and in no way helpful.
About the accuracy - I'm pretty sure there are issues with accuracy. On Monday of this week, a day where - to my knowledge - my dog did not go walkabout, his history shows him a long way away, which I would entirely doubt but it would be unusual, and he would have to be MIA to get that far away. The wonky part is that it shows him IN THE LAKE, and I guarantee you he does not willingly swim. I have no explanation for this history, but I am fairly certain it is not right.
Overall, I imagined a product that performs much better than this one for $400. But because of the dog rescue story above, which I'm sure would have taken considerably longer (if at all), I would buy this product again for $400.
| Brand | PETFON |
|---|---|
| Dimensioni prodotto | 50.9 x 50.9 x 21.34 cm; 1.04 Kg |
| Peso articolo | 1.04 kg |
