How does it work when you really need it to work? The answer is better than a sharp stick in the eye. Seriously we were all very thankful we had it. We moved here with a puggle, think stomach with legs and a breathing problem, and added a pyrenes/lab. The puggle with bad knees came free with a load of landscaping rock, the pyr mix was an adopted lost dog. They were both stubborn and loved to roam. The puggle would eventually come back if she could remember where home was after she had followed her nose all over the county. The pyr mix was too busy singing born free and trying to expand his flocks range to care too much about this thing called home. We spent many hours randomly driving the roads, walking miles of road and woods with no clue which direction to even go. They thought it was the best game we ever came up with. It’s depressing when you realize you are not smarter than your pet and no matter what you come up with to keep them contained to your yard they will figure out how to defeat you.
So here we are with yet another breed of dog who is independent, loves to run, and is like the raptors in Jurassic Park, always testing the perimeter for weakness. Tas, whose name I have been misspelling as Taz, blasted out the front door which was being held open mere inches. I was outside, Bill was just starting to come out, Tas was sitting in another room. To say we were surprised would be an understatement. To say he was surprised when he found himself untethered by humans would also be an understatement. Once he realized we were not all going on a jolly walk and that he, himself, could go as far and as fast as he wanted the game was a foot. He ran and leapt and sailed through the woods. Initially he stayed close to us and for a brief instant we held out hope that he would just run around, tire out and come back in. HA! Just about the time I thought okay this might not be too bad he looked towards the back woods and was gone.
Out came three phones. It felt like the Fi app was initially slow to update when put into lost dog mode. Maybe it was because it is just slow or maybe it was because all three of us hit it at once whatever the reason it took about 10 minutes to update on his location. Once it showed him it then seemed to update quicker because we could watch him move. We watched as he went out through the back woods then turned left and ran along the back property line. Sam and Bill were following along and Sam even caught a glimpse of him pretty much where Fi said he was. Once he got down towards the end of the driveway Fi reported that he was in the subdivision across the street and even at the address it always shows him at when we are at the end of the driveway. This is where all of our practice use paid off because we knew not to head in that direction instead the focused on the dot. That dot showed he was between the driveway and the road down in the woods by the fenced in pasture. It also showed that he had stopped moving and sure enough there he was slowly making his way up the side of the ravine back to the driveway. He came right up to the guys and was ready to come in.
I had stayed back at the house just in case he came back, also because walking the woods and climbing up and down the ravine with a broken arm just didn’t seem smart. Plus I thought that once I had left the defined home area it seemed harder to figure out where Tas was in relation to me. Once I was back in the home zone it made more sense it also seemed to update faster. I’m wondering if that was because it was working off the wifi rather than cellular to get the gps updates. Maybe the initial delay in getting that first update was the same thing phones switching from wifi to cellular.
Overall the experience was great and we were all happy to have it. Instead of randomly driving the county, walking the woods and in general not having any clues where to look we knew the direction to focus. This allowed us to be there when he was ready to come back rather than us being in a totally different area of the property. Had he come up and not seen anyone he probably would have gotten a second wind and taken off on a brand new adventure. Who knows how long we would have kept missing each other and how many hours it might have taken or if we would have found him at all. In all I think the search took maybe 20 minutes even with the slow first update. It did drain the battery faster in lost dog mode when he came back the battery was at 24%. I don’t know what it was at when we started but I do know that under normal use the battery has only needed to be charged a couple of times it lasts a long time.
We would recommend Fi.
