Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is my third attempt at a tracking collar for my dog, and I think it may be the one that will work. Let me acknowledge that our situation presents some challenges that or not present everywhere. Specifically, we are in a rural setting where the only cell phone provider with decent service is Verizon. Second, we have hilly terrain which makes it difficult to use any system based on RF communication. And third, our dog is a livestock guardian dog who wanders freely as she works. We started with a Whistle Go because a friend in another town had enjoyed splendid results with it. I'm reasonably confident that it would have worked well for us, except that AT&T service is so awful where we live. Having returned the Whistle Go, we next tried a Dogtra Pathfinder, which is really more setup for episodic used by hunters than as a routine tracking collar. Because of this, the Pathfinder has much more limited battery life, so short that it would have worn out both our dog and us to keep it charged. It also is heavily dependent on RF communication between the remote and the dog’s collar, which was difficult with our hilly terrain. I think we have the solution we need with the FitBark. Some pros: 1. I shrugged off all the information about monitoring my dog’s activity levels each day, but I must now admit that I find it strangely captivating. Because she’s a livestock guardian dog, she’s active at night, so I check each morning to see when she was active and when she was resting. Maybe it will become boring to me later, but not yet. 2. Customer service is nothing short of phenomenal. You must use the app on your phone, but you can ask a question via chat and depend on getting an answer from a knowledgeable person within minutes, 24 HOURS A DAY. I know because I rubbed my dog at 11:30 one night and realized that her collar had come off somewhere within her 6 acre Safe Place. I reached out in panic to customer service, and they stayed with me and held my hand – using all the many resources available to them - until I found the collar about 18 difficult hours later. Now some cons: 1. The FitBark has great battery life. I can go for two weeks or so without charging the battery, which is as good as I'm going to need. However, when I must charge it, I have to pry off the plastic cover with a screwdriver, attach a magnetic clip to the device, and then later snap the cover back in place after charging. So far that system has held up okay, but I question how long it will last. 2. No doubt to conserve battery life, FitBark is slow to respond with our dog’s location. It usually takes 3-5 minutes to get an update on her location when she moves. To be honest, that’s probably as fast as we need, but it is disconcerting to know she has moved but to see her old location still shown in the app. 3. Because our dog roams a large area routinely, her Safe Place is equally large, and as long as she is in her Safe Place, the FitBark cannot and will not tell us where she is. There are plenty of times when we know she is in her Safe Place but still would like to know her location. That is impossible with the FitBark. I get it that it prolongs battery life to turn off the GPS locator when her collar is within wifi range, and I’m grateful for that. But how about this: it should be simple to program the app to allow me to turn on the GPS locator for, say 20 minutes, just long enough to get a location on her, and then have it automatically turn back off. I would know that if I do that all day long I would run the battery down much faster, but every now and then you really want to know where your dog is.