Wandering blues
GPS technology tracks down wayward dogs and cats
It’s bound to happen: Your dog gets curious and shoots through the front door, or digs her way under the fence, or takes off after a deer during a walk in the woods.
Rather than track down Fido the old-school way — by crisscrossing the neighborhood posting “lost” signs — you can go high-tech with GPS.
The same technology that clocks your run times and tells you how to get to grandma’s house will also tell you which neighbor has kindly yanked your dog out of harm’s way and into the shelter of their garage.
The cons to this particular bit of technology are price and aesthetics. Animals GPS is around $150, while Spotlight clocks in at $250. Frankly, both are ugly as sin; they’re essentially big black boxes that sit on the collar. But for Sparky the Jack Russell, whose little legs routinely carry him miles from the house when he escapes, it’s probably worth it.
If you’ve got $500 and nothing to spend it on, you can splurge for a more expensive version of this technology that’s designed for hunters to track their dogs; they offer more options (such as how fast your dog is moving, useful when trying to decide to pursue on foot or in the car) and are smaller.
For those of us with a little less cash floating around — and who happen to live in Dunwoody — a new website launched in the past couple of months can aid in finding lost dogs: the Dunwoody Dog Directory.
The site’s founder has been visiting dog parks in the area to spread the word about DDD in hopes of helping owners find their lost pets. Even if your dog isn’t lost, you can register her to be part of the database. Sign up for the e-mail list, and you’ll receive pictures of lost or found dogs, too. The idea is to form a comprehensive list of dogs in the area. Hopefully this idea will catch on and spread to other areas.
And, of course, to avoid this mess in the first place, you can simply crate your dog — especially during high-traffic weekends like Halloween. Plus, the farther they are from all that chocolate, the better. And believe me, there’s nothing worse than trekking up and down your street rattling a bag of treats in go-go boots and a dress that offers zero protection against the cold at midnight. Not that I’ve done that before.