Dog GPS collars? (Link v Whistle v Gibi v Fi v Tractive)

[asifasif44]

My recently retired hunting hound slipped out this morning and ran a merry chase at least a half mile into the woods behind our house, but I had no idea what direction he went and didn't want to go looking in the woods in case he ran into the road. Luckily he went into the woods and came up to my mother on the path. Therefore I'm thinking of getting a GPS collar for him. I've looked at Link, whistle, gibi, Fi, and Tractive. I saw a thread on here that reported some problems with Tractive. I'm not a huge fan of Fi needing its own collar, but I like the battery life. The Link and Whistle ones look good and I like that the whistle comes with interchangeable batteries.

Does anyone have experience with any of these trackers and would recommend for or against any of them?

UPDATE: I purchased the Tractive and liked it for a while but I did a test run where I had a family member take my dog into the woods behind our house and see if I could find him. It did not work AT ALL. I think I am going to try to send it back and get a refund and now I'm back to square one

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@asifasif44 We've used Whistle Go for the last three years. We went that route after escape #20. It has been invaluable in getting her back home. The real-time GPS update used to be frustratingly slow, but it has been improved quite a bit. I believe it's 45 second intervals. Being able to add people to a whitelist of users has been great when we travel.

 

[asifasif44]

@imagebeastmarkbeast Wow escape 20! I think I'd have a heart attack around escape 3. So that's one vote for whistle

 

[tdselector]

@asifasif44 I have Fi and have been very happy with it. I briefly had Whistle when I adopted my dog because the rescue lent it to me until I got my own gps collar. I found them honestly very similar, other than the physical aesthetic - the Fi is slim, where the Whistle is a big ugly box that stuck out from the collar and got caught on things.

It's possible I didn't have the Whistle long enough to compare them well, other than hating the profile of the big grey box.

Also for whenever it matters - the Fi does not necessarily require the standard Fi collar. First off, because Fi partners with other collar makers and you can choose from a large variety of them on their website. And second because you could always sew the Fi block onto your own custom collar. That's what I did!

I'm in rural Maine and the Fi has great coverage.