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.

 

[asifasif44]

@tdselector Ah yeah it does look a bit big. I was hoping my dog would be big enough that it wouldn't look so big on him. How big is your dog?
Yes I did see the other collars they have and some look quite nice, I just love his current collar lol. It's a wide band of leather with a brass nameplate on it. I might be able to find a cobbler who could sew it on because I certainly couldn't.
It's good to hear it has good range. I'm in a fairly rural area in southern new England so nothing like the ruralness of Maine but a lot of the promotional stuff shows people using it in suburban areas.

 

[josh328]

@asifasif44 We use Tractive and have been happy with it. We lost the unit, not the dog, in the winter and we were able to locate using the live function and the chirp the unit produces. My son and I had to dig in the snow but we did find it.

I do wish the unit was smaller in size and that the battery lasted longer. But the subscription price is decent and it does the job.

 

[asifasif44]

@josh328 I've heard people have had issues with the notifications of dog escape, have you had issues with that?
For me it's actually not a huge one unless the dog gets out when I'm not at home as he usually slips out the door when someone goes in or out and it would be good to know if he did that when I'm not home.

 

[josh328]

@asifasif44 I have not actually used that particular feature.

 

[glorykarl]

@asifasif44 I use it and it's great. The problem is you have to understand how the device works, and I don't think they do a good job explaining that.



As not to destroy the battery life, it recommends you tell it your home Wi-Fi network name, and when it can see that network it stays in a low power state.



The problem with that is if you have a really strong router, The device might be able to be way far away and still in the low power state. Almost every negative review I've seen seems to be caused by this although the reviewer might not know it.



Personally what I did was get an old router I had lying around, intentionally the worst one I had and put it in a corner of my basement where the signal just barely reaches the entire house and a little bit of my yard.



This way it jumps out of the low power state before he gets to an alert zone and notifications work great, but battery saver still works when inside the house and very close to the house. I charge it when it gets down to about 50% which for me is every week or so.

I've seen other people mention they've used their neighbors Wi-Fi name, But I would only do that if it's a direction the dog can't go/ You're not worried about if that makes sense.



So with that caveat it's the best one out there in my opinion.

 

[littleh]

@glorykarl Some more info:

According to Tractive’s help article, it only detects the Wi-Fi, doesn’t actually connect to it, so an Internet. connection isn’t required.

And in case others want to do something similar, you can use any route and just adjust the signal power down.

 

[glorykarl]

@littleh Exactly! I didn't want to reduce my actual wifi range, so I just plugged the old router into a power outlet only, so no internet but it will broadcast the SSID (intentionally poorly/not far).

 

[littleh]

@glorykarl Sorry, yes, I meant you can take any router you aren't using and adjust its power level down. Not that you should actually reduce the power level of your active router. So you don't have to find a router with a weaker antenna.

 

[pycnodonte]

@asifasif44 I have two Anatolian shepards. I live in a rural area with lots of water and tree cover. I put the Fi 3 on one dog and the Tractive XL on the other and let them run. The dogs always stay together so it is a good comparison. The Fi3 will not update in the wooded areas while the Tractive pretty much does a step by step live update. Yesterday, the Fi3 did not update for over an hour. I was able to locate the dogs 2 miles from house with the Tractive. The battery life on both is about 4 days. They are within the base range about16h/day otherwise on GPS so they use alot of battery. They both get alot of water time with no problem. It will be interesting to see how long the trackers last as the Tractive is held to the collar with rubber attachment which seems like it could be pulled off in thick brush. My last Fi collar broke where the tracker attached to the collar (which is unfixable). For $2/month the Tractive is replaced if lost or broken. Fi collar has to be replaced at full cost. To get the cheaper subscription rate you have to buy a minimum of 1 year which is not refundable if you break or lose your tracker.