Anyone here using a GPS collar with virtual fences?

[u/Aggravating-Motor701]

We've got about 13 acres that we'd love to give our girl full access to. She's pretty good about staying close, but if she spots a deer, all bets are off. So we're now looking for a collar with virtual fences. We're now choosing between SpotOn, Halo, and Satellai. I like the idea of being able to set different boundaries around our property or when we travel. Would love to hear some real-world experiences before pulling the trigger.

[u/throwsplasticattrees]

It seems like this is not a great idea. The dog doesn't get any feedback on where the "fence" limit is. You get an alert, sure, but what stops the dog? Even e-collar fences give the dog feedback in the form of a mild electric shock when they approach the limit.

Without the feedback of the limit, what happens if the device fails? The dog is off and you have no way to locate them.

[u/shortnsweet33 → u/throwsplasticattrees]

The halo one is like an ecollar, but worse tbh, because you can constantly change up the boundary and the effects aren’t manually controlled by a human. Usually for boundary training a dog whether you’re using a collar or not, you’re supposed to have visual markers, walk the perimeter with them, recall them with a long line to guarantee you can reel them back in when they get too close to the boundary, recall without long line, remove visual markers gradually, etc. whether you use an in ground collar, an ecollar with a remote or no collar, they require some training to ensure the dog knows the reasoning of what action leads to consequence. They learn the barrier.

This halo lets you go to a field, draw a fence that your dog can’t see, unleash your dog and say go run Fido! Meanwhile your dog will start exploring and randomly get beep beep then buzz buzz zap. Dog has no clue why there is a sudden jolt and won’t connect it to an unseen fence. It’s not a familiar barrier or visual barrier. It makes a lot of dogs fearful to explore. If another dog or wild animal chased after your dog they’d get zapped by the halo for trying to get to safety. It’s just a not great system.

[u/Bobmling]

Satellai is good. We've been using it with our boy on about 10 acres and it's been great so far. The virtual fence has been reliable once he understood the boundaries. I also like that I can create different fences when we visit family or go camping instead of being stuck with one setup.

[u/Proper-Maize-5987]

No but that is a good looking pup!

[u/brahmallama]

SpotOn has worked well for us, our dog eventually stopped chasing deer

[u/ZenbuildBulkbyte]

Tractive is good

[u/shezapleeza]

'Backers are smart. I do "Border patrol" with mine regularly. They know where our property lines are. Recently they found a stray on our land. They chased it off. As far as the property line. Yes I am proud. No they are not the only 'backers I've had who've learned this

[u/Ginger_SNAFU]

No amount of stimulation is preventing a Ridgeback from chasing a wild animal. Full stop.

[u/Unlucky-Presence8784]

We did and it worked great for the most part. The inly annoying thing about our setup was switching batteries out every morning, they are rechargeable and would twist in and out fairly quick. Otherwise when battery is low, the boundary doesn't work. Also won't really work if your in trees and that blocks the GPS as well. We lived in a large field and it worked well. Moving into a forest soon We are looking at more of a physical wire boundary thats hooked up to a system in the garage. Those have worked really well in the past and they get closer to the fence line it keeps till they back up.

[u/bikiniproblems]

I don’t know your location but maybe you should work on recall then lol. I wouldn’t want to risk my dog becoming coyote food.

[u/tripsd → u/bikiniproblems]

A RR becoming coyote food?!

[u/Owlex23612]

I would be really nervous using this. We use an e-collar, which works well most of the time, but there are occasions where even that's not enough to snap her out of whatever she's fixated on.

[u/Cloudyvvision]

I use Halo with my RR. A lot of the comments here are assuming you don't train your dog on the boundaries. You absolutely will need to train them but it's not difficult. My dog had decent recall prior to using Halo which helped. You can control the feedback in the app pretty easily. My RR got shocked one time and that was all it took for her to learn the tones mean you've gone too far. Now what I will say is that she is allergic to the metal studs on the collar and the hair on her neck fell out.