Welcome back to McCann dogs. I'm instructor Carol. And in this video,
I'm going to review the new GPS collar from tractive.
Before you watch this video, just so you know,
this is based on a previous video where I actually lost the Berk and had to find
them, check out this video right here to see the device in action.
Me actually tracking my dog. This isn't a sponsored video.
They did send us the tracker so that we could test it.
They gave us four months of usage on it and asked us to try it out.
I want to talk about the ruggedness of the device because it needs to last.
And if my pet is lost and on the run or getting into tight spaces,
I need to know maybe going through water.
I need to know that it's going to last through that.
So I've had this one for about four months on the Berk.
He's a pretty active dog. He goes into narrow spots.
He's been in and out of water several times. He's been jumping climbing.
We've been doing disk. So lots of flying around and jumping rolling.
So the device has stood up to all of that. Now, again,
I'm a little biased because I have units that are four or five years that have
stood up to that for that long. So again,
I'm seeing probably this one would be similar and the last four months,
that's what I've seen along with the device. The clips important,
because if I have the most rugged device in the world,
if he gets lost and he's running through the Bush and the unit falls off,
it's pretty useless to me. So I need to know it's a good clip.
This one appears to be over the four months. It's never come off.
I've never had a case where it's even close to come off or unattached with the
rubber. It's also very convenient. It's easy to put on and take off.
I don't need a combined collar,
just the unit and I can fit it on any collar I have.
The app itself was pretty easy to use. I was using it on my iPhone XR.
If anybody cares about which phone I had I've also used it on my iPad.
The looks good. It was pretty easy to use,
even though I wasn't totally familiar with it.
A little different every once in a while,
checking when you first get the app and actually trying to find your dog.
So I got a little more used to how to find things and what functions it gave.
I found a couple of cool functions that were useful. The speed itself.
Let me know he was on the move in this case that Ken had them in a car.
But even when I was narrowing down,
it was nice to know he was stationary as opposed to,
was he still moving that made a big deal?
The other thing was the augmented reality, the AR.
In this zone. When I hold my camera up,
it tells me the perks to the right.
So I want to keep this on for a little bit and see if he's worried thinking I
am. I think I'm going to be making a left turn up here.
And then we'll see if that changes. Okay.
So that we got pretty use useful function in,
especially in if I was in an area, I didn't know at all.
One thing that did happen when I hit live it circled blue showed me
it was moving into live mode, but then didn't, and then I had to hit it again.
No big deal in the span of things when I was playing in the field outside of
McCann's no big deal. Okay. I'm just going to hit it again.
Cause that was happening pretty repeatedly for a while. Not always.
If I was actually stressed because I couldn't find my dog and in a little
bit of a panic that might have been a bigger deal, but for me, I'd seen, okay,
just hit it again.
And I was into live mode and it certainly let me find the Berk.
Accuracy is also pretty important with the device. Great. That it's reliable,
but I need to be able to say that it's actually going to find my dog tractive
says that the device is accurate to about 25 and a half feet.
And that's based on ideal conditions. So not in dense forest,
not in steel buildings, that type of thing. Now,
when I was hunting the Berk it got me to inside
bout 80 feet. Thank you, Berkey inside about 80 feet.
And that just put it in perspective.
That would be the disk less than the distance from home plate to first base.
But I did like about the unit is when I was about 250 feet away, I had a sense,
I knew exactly where he was now.
It was pretty dense blush that he was hidden in there.
So obviously can't see him. There were two paths leading. So,
but my peace of mind was, I know he's in there now. It's just,
I don't want to do too much climbing through this dense bush fighting my way
through. So which path is going to get me closest to his location,
but that sense of confidence. If you've lost your dog, you're in a panic,
you know, he's here. I also knew at that point,
he was still because the app is telling me he's not in motion. I can see speed.
I can see his path.
I did see that there was a little bit of circling around there,
but I know he still, which is very common with lost dogs. They hunker down,
but if he was still on the run, I would know it.
Know where approximately he was even at 250 feet away and know which way he was
headed.
One thing that's obviously important is the cost of the device and the value of
the device for what you're getting the cost of the unit itself is 55,
about $55. You ask, in addition to that, you do need a plan.
So they have a basic plans. They have premium plans.
You can buy them by month by year.
So really that's a personal decision that people want. Now,
one big difference between the basic and the premium is whether or not you want
multiple countries. Tractive says it works in 33.
I need it to work throughout north America.
So both in Canada and the United States, which means I need a premium plan now.
And I looked at the value of those plans.
A lot of times advertisers talk about this product costs you less than it
costs you to buy a coffee a day. Well,
tractive for me certainly does cost me less than a coffee per day,
even with the premium plan. And trust me, I pay a lot on coffee.
So if it's less than one coffee per day,
it's way less than my coffee bill at the end of the week. Size
And look can be important depending on your needs. You know,
some of you may have you know, collars that you want it to match,
or you don't want it to be obvious size,
especially if you have a smaller is important.
I had a little nine pound Jack Russell.
So obviously I don't want a very large collar on a smaller dog.
Looks-Wise I was pretty pleased with it. It's pretty sleek.
It's not super obvious. So I was pretty happy with the look.
I like the fact that I can put it on my own collar rather than one integral
unit. You can also, although I didn't,
but you can buy sleeves for the devices. There's a midnight blue one.
So if you wanted a different color or you wanted it dark instead of white,
you can do that. There's also one that's glow in the dark,
which might help you again,
find your dog or even be useful in your own backyard.
One function that I had never considered important,
that I got a little new perspective on looking for the Berk was the family or
friend sharing.
So I can open it any individual tracker and I can share it to a specific person.
I could share it for a day, a chair for a week. I can share it permanently.
And I always thought, why would I want to share that?
But I tracked the Berk down and I've got him, you know,
80 feet away. And it's really dense Bush, or maybe it's not optimum conditions.
And I can't get that accuracy quite that close, but I know where he is.
I can now share that to other people that are coming out.
They can be seeing exactly what I'm seeing when we're looking for,
when we're looking for our dog.
The other thing is what if my cell phone doesn't have good service.
The Berk's collar may be getting great satellite information so I can get
great accuracy, but my cell phone doesn't have good service to be able to track.
I can now have someone else at a remote location,
pull up that app and track, and maybe I can get the odd text message.
It's still going to help me.
I can still have someone looking where he is when I was hunting for the Berk.
If you watch that video, you'll see, I did turn on the light and sound.
I think I'm going to turn on light and I'm going to turn on sound and we'll see
whether they help me pinpoint the Berk faster.
Carol, Carol just alert it.
Coming out of this thing. The sound is so, so quiet and the lights not huge.
You can see that I can, you know, if it was completely dark,
you might pick up the latest the dog was moving.
It's really not so much defined the dog, although it might be of help.
But if you did misplace the union in your house or if it did fall off and you're
looking for the unit you play that sound. You can turn on the light again,
just a little extra feature, not bang for buck,
but it doesn't hurt one part of the tracker. I really haven't used a,
so I can't talk to you about is the whole fitness component.
So it allows you to track your, you know, how far your dog moves,
what sort of exercise they're getting. It allows you to earn badges.
It allows you to compare with others. So they'll show your rating. You know,
your dog is more active than anyone in north America, any other dog?
For me, I didn't really think that that would be too useful,
but I'd love to hear it. You know, if you've used that side, that fitness,
how do you use it and what do you find beneficial about it and how does it work?
Throw it into the comments, love to hear about it.
We've only had this collar for four months and really haven't had any
interaction after tractive Senate haven't had any problems that we've had to
contact customer service. However,
I have dealt with customer service with my previous trackers and
they were great very quickly.
They sent me a replacement product and I was up and running.
So my PR my personal experience is their customer service has been excellent.
Have you used this device? If you have,
I love to hear about your experiences or are there other collars you'd like us
to review? If so, put it in the comment section below on that note.
I'm Carol. This is the Burke happy training.