I really hope people aren't using these as an excuse to let their unreliable dogs off leash.
IMO, these are for WORST case scenarios when your dog accidentally gets lost. Not justification for letting them run off because you'll be able to find them. A dog shouldn't be off leash unless the owner has complete verbal control over the dog and it's trusted not to run off. If they ran off, they could easily be attacked and killed by other dogs, hit by cars, stolen (and have the collar removed) or could HURT other peoples/animals/wildlife... and get the owner a lovely fine and potentially pts.
I think it is a little much, personally. I'd rather train my dog and make sure they don't have the option of running away.
Agreed. I think it's a terrible thing to market to average Joe's dog that like to escape or just run off when the door is opened. You may eventually find your dog, but no GPS can stop them from getting hit by a car, killed by wildlife, or shot by a neighbor. It is absolutely no excuse to get out proper training, period.
I was wondering about the TAGG collar and how well it works. My friend has a sheep farm and keeps Great Pyrenees dogs with the sheep. She gets a lot of hassle from animal rights groups about leaving the dogs outside with the sheep 24/7, which is what they are bred and raised to do. The dogs and sheep do have a shelter, which is not used, but it's there.
Well, her young female went missing yesterday. The fence got weighed down with the snow and the dog left, however, my friend was not sure if the AR people took the dog or not. I was told that sometimes they will wander away, but always find their way back home.
The good news is, the dog showed up this morning, a bit ragged and smelling like skunk. But I thought one of these might ease her mind a little. And, yes, her dogs wear collars with tags and are microchipped.
That would be a good use, but the first thing that always runs through my head, they AR-nuts remove the collars! My neighbors mostly have hunting hounds, Coon and Coyote trained, and many of them use the GPS collars and receivers. Once we had a neighbor come up to one edge of our property where he tracked his dog to, but couldn't retrieve the dog because it buried it's way into a very large wood pile, but he was able to pick up the dog the next morning when it finally found its way out of the pile.
But I've heard all the horror stories of the AR-nuts picking up these dogs just outside wooded areas along roads, removing the collars, then driving them off as far as possible to dump them at high kill shelters. Interesting you should relay that scenario though, my mother belongs to a local email farm list group where someone in this area is having a problem with the local ACO who's also an AR activist stealing her LGD's, the first was later found dead in a ditch, otherwise unharmed (not HBC) but dead, the second was found before it was too late at AC but now has to go through the court system to get the dog back, and the court is playing the "we've had to move your hearing date" game. Like I said though, unless you could find a way to embed in the dog or padlock on the GPS unit, they will just remove it asap.