I first saw the Tagg Pet Tracker (99.95 for the basic model) last year at one of the local doggie festivals we went to. I am attracted to shiny, techie things like flies to honey though so I was intrigued. I had my doubts about it working for a small dog though because the unit is pretty large – a bit bigger than a silver dollar (and they say it is for dogs over 10 lbs).
When I attended BarkWorld last October, I saw the Tagg tracker again. I talked to a product rep and they were generous enough to send us one for review.
Once it arrives, you have to set up a profile for your pet online (The first three months of the service is free and then it is $7.95 a month after that). It wasn’t hard to set up the account and activate the tracker. It was the middle of the night, I was tired and sick and it took me about 15 minutes to set up, a couple more minutes to download android app and about 10 min to read instructions.
When you set up an account, you must assign the tracker to one dog. That makes sense but I was a little disappointed because I wanted to use the tracker for both Chester and Gretel or Doggie walking clients. I guess I could call it “Jessica’s dog” to use on both Chester and Gretel.
As part of the setup, you are asked to enter an address and set radius around house. When your dog goes outside that radius, you are sent an alert via email and text message. The radius didn’t get really small – only about a block so it won’t tell you when they get out of the yard, only when they wander farther than a block.I think I would like to know a little quicker than that but it’s still a pretty good deal.
Putting it to use does take a learning curve.
You can turn off the alert feature if you are going for a walk or car ride so you don’t set off the alarm if going outside of the home zone. That feature didn’t work for me the first time due to operator error. My mistake gave me a chance to test it out though.
I was driving so I would expect things to be a little off but I was only able to get about 5 miles from my home before I got the first text notice. I am guessing it refreshes about every 5 minutes and it took me 5 minutes to drive there. It gave me an address and said Chester was within 15 feet of that. When I was walking it was very accurate, giving the address of the nearest house.
Once you get a notice that your pet is out of the home zone you can turn on the tracking feature and it will send you a location every 3 minutes for 30 minutes. That worked well.
If , like me, you didn’t enable the “alarm” correctly, you can simply turn off the text notification by texting STOP back to the tracker. I thought that was pretty cool. Let’s pretend your dog IS lost though.
Once you are in pursuit of your dog, you rely on the app to track them. The app is Google Maps based and very accurate. It shows a little dot where your dog is.
The app has a “Directions” feature that is supposed to help guide you to that location (say…in case you were in a strange City or an unfamiliar part of yours). That part could definitely use some improvement.
When I clicked it basically seemed to give me directions from where I was standing to where I was standing. I typed in my address into the from location and it did give accurate directions to my general location but it told me to go to an intersection a block or two away from where our dot was on the map. It would be good for getting you to the general location but then you would have to use the map to hone in.
The tracker comes with two clips and 2 sets of stiff rubber straps to attach to a harness or collar. One set of of them is for narrow straps and and one for wider straps. I am not sure what exactly “small” and “large” are to Tagg but they sell a “small” collar on their website that is 0.75 inches in width and a “large” that is 1 inch.
A note on installing the rubber strap onto the clip: Don’t do what I did and practice with the rubber strap without the collar. I had to pry it off clip with pliers, which was hard, and I could see how doing that a couple of times would stretch it out. You can order replacement clips (and other accessories) 0n the Tagg website if you do break one though.
So how did I like it and what do I think are the cool things about it?
I will be honest, after my initial trail I put it away for a while. I hadn’t quite figured out how to use it properly. There is only one button on the unit that seems to do everything and I am still not sure what the difference is between pressing the button to turn it off/on and pressing the button to merely disable the notifications. I am not giving up though. I am still working to figure it all out.
Luckily, I don’t have Houdini dogs that escape from the yard. If I did, you bet I would make them wear one when they went outside. I don’t have experience with these things but I could see the tracker being useful to track a hunting dog, extra insurance for your service dog (so you can get it back if it gets lost) or if you are hiking with your dog off-leash (which we don’t condone) and there is a possibility that it could run off.
Like I said, I had hoped to use it on my dog walking clients. That way if one did, god forbid, escape from me I would have a lot better chance of finding it. I also though that it would be something I would use if I was going to briefly tie my dog up outside a coffee shop or something. That way if someone stole my dog I would be able to track it….or at least see which way they headed if they find the tracker and take it off.
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Molly The Wally says
What a good idea if your pet is prone to running away or you take them out in the wilderness. Modern technology is wonderful. Have a terrific Thursday.
Best wishes Molly
AdventureJess says
Thanks for muddling through my horrible post. It was only a draft and accidentally got published. Oops! I fixed it and now it even has pretty pictures 🙂
I am wondering when they will start inserting GPS microchips into dogs? That would be cool…kind of. I don’t know I would want “the man” to know everywhere I was walking my dog. With technology nowadays I bet it won’t be long before it is an option.
Molly The Wally says
No tracker device in your dog….shucks imagine the blokes taking the pooches to the pub would be so grounded.
best wishes Molly
Roxy the traveling dog says
That would be super handy for dogs who love to wander off. These guys never get very far though. I do like the idea of it tracking exercise, that could be very cool.
AdventureJess says
Thanks for muddling through my horrible post. It was only a draft and accidentally got published. Oops! I fixed it and now it even has pretty pictures 🙂
Chester and Gretel are not wanderers either. I don’t really give them a chance because they are always on leash. I keep trying to think of a good use for this thing for us because it is a way cool idea 🙂
Oz the Terrier says
Well, it seems like a great idea to have the tracker especially if a dog has a tendency to wander off. I think, though, someone in this house would be extremely frustrated if they had trouble, like you, figuring the thing out. Maybe they could provide better instructions with the product?!
emma says
I can see it now…me tracking a wabbit down the road away from home followed by mom tracking me with her device…I doubt she would be fast enough for it to help us much but the basic idea is good.
Amy @ LifewithDoxies says
I like the concept, and the price doesn’t seem too bad for what it does. I’m not sure if it would be useful for me or not. I’m almost always within sight of the boys when they’re off-leash at a park, and at home, they’re on-leash.
Dachshund Nola and Her Mom says
I’ve seen these before. They are REALLY big (maybe because Nola’s only 8lbs soaking wet), so I don’t think I’d get it for Nola. The monthly fee seems a bit stiff, too. Is it water proof? Looks like it sticks out a lot; I’d be worried about it getting caught on something and strangling the dog. 😮
Amanda
AdventureJess says
Yeah….at 8 lbs it would probably be too big. Gretel is around 9 or 10 and any bigger and it probably would have been a problem for her. However, it is really dog=dependent because the neck size seems to matter more than anything. Gretel has a skinny neck but it is long. It soesn’t stick out that much at all….at least not the parts that could get caught on something. And yes, it is waterproof.
Wyatt Airedale says
That looks like it could be a handy device. Anything to help a lost dog find it’s way home again 😀
Wyatt and Stanzie
Hailey and Zaphod's Lady says
That is really neat. With an escape dog something like this would be good.
houndstooth says
I was contacted by them last fall and they said I could review it, but it never arrived! I envy you getting to try it out! I’ve heard about some of the features it has, and I would love to try it out, especially on hikes.
Roberta says
Thanks for the review; I’ve been looking at it for my wandering Beagle, Shiloh, and now even more for my wanna wander new Beagle, Keen. For either of them, the size won’t matter but getting caught on something could, though Shiloh has kept on both his collars several weeks now.
Colby says
Great review Jessica! I spoke to the folks at TAGG at BarkWorld too. I can see many uses for a device like this, but in my house it would for the most part go unused except for the Activity Tracking feature. Did you get a chance to demo the Activity Tracking? It might be a good way to motivate you to take the dogs out more often and on longer walks just to see how much activity you could do in a day. It would also be interesting to see how much your dogs moved around during the day when you’re not home.
AdventureJess says
The activity tracking is next on my list. That will take a bit of a learning curve too I am sure 🙂 That is the part I was most interested in trying too. I plan to post about it in a couple of weeks.
Colby says
Cool! Can’t wait to hear about that feature. I’m pretty sure my dogs don’t do too much besides move from the bed to the couch, but who knows they may surprise me 🙂
Jen says
Great review! I don’t think we would really get a lot of use out of this, maybe the activity tracker like Colby said, but I think many dogs would benefit from one!
Leticia Alceda says
So… What worries me is that, in the event someone actually stole your dog, by just unbuckling the collar and throwing it away boom, then it’s useless.
AdventureJess says
Tagg does not use thst festure as a selling point. That is just one idea I thought of…..and not a super good one for that exact reason 🙂
Jodi says
I talked to the rep at BP’s and I have to say, she gave a very good presentation. That being said, it didn’t offer everything I wanted and I couldn’t justify the $8 per month, for an occasional wandered. If I had a compulsive wanderer, that might be different.
Great review.
ASmith says
I’ve had the Tagg tracker for 5 months, and just now my 3rd tracker (already the 2nd replacement) has malfunctioned to the point of being unusable.
Pros:
– The product features are great – if they worked, they’d be nearly perfect. You’re supposed to get email and/or SMS notifications when certain things happen, e.g. tracker falls off, turns off, battery is low, dog is out of the tag zone, etc.
– Visually the product looks good, solid/durable, and small enough so that it doesn’t make the dog uncomfortable.
– Customer support is excellent. They are very quick to respond, very knowledgeable, and courteous in paying for the shipment of replacement trackers.
So all that works in theory, but not in practice.
Cons:
– The tracker keeps breaking. I went through two replacements, patiently understanding that things do happen. Now is the 3rd broken tracker in 5 months. The tracker is designed to be very durable – after all, it’s for dogs. Instructions say it can remain on when the dog is swimming, etc. My dog is very calm and has never worn the tracker near water, except in the rain. The first tracker broke about a month in, at which point it became unresponsive (showed some abnormal purple light and wouldn’t turn on). Second one broke a couple of weeks in but in a different way (visually everything would work but it wouldn’t send out any signals). I debugged everything thoroughly with tech support with no success and it was determined that this 2nd one was faulty as well. They mentioned that there was actually a software bug in a recent version that prevented the battery from being charged – unrelated to my problem but suggests that bugs on their end are quite typical. So I am now on the 3rd one, 2 weeks in, and all of a sudden the battery died and I was never notified about any low battery as it normally should. It seems to be charging now and able to turn on, but I could have easily left it on for another 2 weeks thinking that it’s working and trusting it with my dog’s life. Most likely they will continue having reliability issues and sooner or later something else will break again.
– Seeing no improvement in reliability after 5 months, I have decided the tracker is essentially useless. I’ve returned it for a PARTIAL refund of the monthly fee. I didn’t get any refund for the tracker itself because they only issue refunds within the first 30 days after purchase. I tried to argue with no success.
I don’t care if the the Activity Tracker doesn’t work (it’s a nice-to-have addon feature), but it’s a big problem when the product fails at its core function. And this isn’t a toy like a mobile app where I can share funny pictures with my friends; it’s a serious device with which I trust the life of my pet. It should never fail. In the worst case, it should at least text me when the device becomes unreachable for some period of time, but it doesn’t even do that.
Alternatives: unfortunately there don’t appear to be any good ones. I thought of trying the Garmin GTU 10, but I see it also has some bad reviews about its software (e.g. their servers go down or something like that). Someone suggested the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger, but it also has many comments about poor reliability. Things that break and require replacement are just a waste of time. If the servers go down, at least you don’t have to replace the device and it sounds like the tracker might work most of the time… so maybe the Garmin GTU 10 is the best choice.
Jessica Rhae says
Thanks for sharing your experience. I am sorry that yours has not been a positive one. I have not had any issues with mine but I admit that I have used it very little in the last few months. I got it to try but not because I need it for tracking my dogs. It’s stayed plugged into the charger and keeps sending me messages like “the tracker has been turned on” and “the battery is fully charged”. I am assuming that is normal, although I never turned the thing off and it has never been NOT fully charged for the past few months. I plan to try out the activity tracking soon so I will cross my fingers that the feature works. I am also not aware of a good alternative. There is another collar-mounted GPS tracker I have seen but I can’t remember what it is called. Perhaps it’s the one you mentioned.
Phillip says
It really sucks that your experience hasn’t been great. For my part I’ve nothing to say about the tracking features but I can see in other people’s review that it’s either hit or miss. The major problem Tagg has at this moment it’s the battery life but I’m sure they will take care of it.
The best tracking collar I’ve used so gar are from Garmin but more geared towards hunting dogs, so it definitely isn’t suited for everyone.
Phil