"AirTag on a Dog" Results

[kkachurak]

We've had an AirTag on our dog now for a few weeks and wanted to report back the pros and cons of using AirTags in this way.

First: It's already well-documented that AirTags are not for tracking pets, and now I see why.

Pros:

• Initially we had a bit of fun by randomly playing the noise once or twice a day. At first, our pupper was a bit confused and it gave us a chuckle. After a few times, however, the dog stopped caring. I would barely call this a "pro". But hey. Worth mentioning.
• Had our dog at a backyard gathering that was not at our home. It was a larger backyard than we were used to and very dark. The owner told us the backyard was completely fenced in, but we weren't 100% sure of that. While enjoying the fire pit and conversation, we would occasionally trigger the noise to find out where in the large backyard our dog was located. NOTE: This only worked sometimes. When the dog was around 40-50 feet or further away from us, the AirTag would not connect and the sound would not play.
• Our house is not large, but sometimes it can be hard to know where the dog is resting his head. We can play the noise to easily find him. But, to be honest, he always comes when called - so barely a pro for us.

Okay, now Cons:

• As far as I can tell, your Apple device has to be close to the AirTag to trigger the noise. There were several times in a large backyard when the AirTag would fail to connect because the dog was more than about 40 feet away.
• The AirTag is currently attached to his collar on a simple Apple leather strap. A thief could easily spot this and rip it off / toss it away, negating any anti-thievery unless we upgraded to a custom AirTag collar that was somewhat more discreet.
• While our dog is not an escape artist or the type to run away from home, we do have the fear that he'll one day chase after a squirrel and become lost. Because AirTags "check in" with nearby iPhones to be found, I find it very unlikely that this would help us find our dog if he was running around the neighborhood. Our dog is very wary and nervous of other people. He probably wouldn't let anyone get close enough to him. It would be extraordinarily lucky for him to ping a nearby iPhone.
• THE BIGGEST CON: I paired the AirTag to my phone and then left my wife and dog on a 5 day work trip. After three days, the AirTag started randomly making noise. At first, my wife thought that I was trying to mess with her. But this is actually intended AirTag behavior to alert others to 1) a possible lost item or 2) someone trying to stalk you. There's really no reason an AirTag shouldn't be able to be a part of a "Family". Frustrating.
• To piggyback off of this: What would happen if my dog escaped and became lost while I wasn't home and was unavailable? My wife would have no way to reach me for help, rendering the AirTag totally useless. I could be on an airplane, in a bad service area, or simply have my phone off.

In short, AirTags are nearly completely useless for tracking pets. There's almost no chance it would help you find your pet if it was stolen, and a very small chance it would help you find your pet in nearly any other situation, including trying to find the pet in a large, fully contained home or yard.

Hopefully Family sharing is made available soon.

 

[edk99]

THE BIGGEST CON: I paired the AirTag to my phone and then left my wife and dog on a 5 day work trip. After three days, the AirTag started randomly making noise. At first, my wife thought that I was trying to mess with her. But this is actually intended AirTag behavior to alert others to 1) a possible lost item or 2) someone trying to stalk you. There's really no reason an AirTag shouldn't be able to be a part of a "Family". Frustrating.

Sounds like you should of paired the Airtag to your wife's phone and not yours if you regularly travel for work. Ultimately Apple should enable family sharing so a family group can track items.

 

[Feek]

In short, AirTags are nearly completely useless for tracking pets.

They're not designed to 'track' anything.

 

[lordhamster]

• THE BIGGEST CON: I paired the AirTag to my phone and then left my wife and dog on a 5 day work trip. After three days, the AirTag started randomly making noise. At first, my wife thought that I was trying to mess with her. But this is actually intended AirTag behavior to alert others to 1) a possible lost item or 2) someone trying to stalk you. There's really no reason an AirTag shouldn't be able to be a part of a "Family". Frustrating.

Pre-covid I traveled all the time, thanks for bringing this up. Did you have any other of your devices (iPad, Mac etc) powered on @home when you left? I wonder if this would alleviate the issue.

 

[ZBoater]

So basically the Airtag did not work as you expected on something that it was not designed for. Cool!

 

[Okta]

They're not designed to 'track' anything.

Yup, its not to say some products to workout ouside of their design parameters but we can't be surprised when they don't work for something they were never intended to be used for

 

[matrix07]

Okay, now Cons:

• As far as I can tell, your Apple device has to be close to the AirTag to trigger the noise. There were several times in a large backyard when the AirTag would fail to connect because the dog was more than about 40 feet away.
• The AirTag is currently attached to his collar on a simple Apple leather strap. A thief could easily spot this and rip it off / toss it away, negating any anti-thievery unless we upgraded to a custom AirTag collar that was somewhat more discreet.
• While our dog is not an escape artist or the type to run away from home, we do have the fear that he'll one day chase after a squirrel and become lost. Because AirTags "check in" with nearby iPhones to be found, I find it very unlikely that this would help us find our dog if he was running around the neighborhood. Our dog is very wary and nervous of other people. He probably wouldn't let anyone get close enough to him. It would be extraordinarily lucky for him to ping a nearby iPhone.
• THE BIGGEST CON: I paired the AirTag to my phone and then left my wife and dog on a 5 day work trip. After three days, the AirTag started randomly making noise. At first, my wife thought that I was trying to mess with her. But this is actually intended AirTag behavior to alert others to 1) a possible lost item or 2) someone trying to stalk you. There's really no reason an AirTag shouldn't be able to be a part of a "Family". Frustrating.
• To piggyback off of this: What would happen if my dog escaped and became lost while I wasn't home and was unavailable? My wife would have no way to reach me for help, rendering the AirTag totally useless. I could be on an airplane, in a bad service area, or simply have my phone off.

I don't see all of those as a con.
1 is normal.
2. There are now some collars for AirTag sold.
3. Pure guessing.
4 and 5. it's software which can be, and most likely will be, added soon.

 

[kthruz143]

Its definitely not useless to track your pet. I have one attached to my cat (sewn into his elastic collar), and it has tracked him almost perfectly. Usually he stays right around the house but earlier this week when I check the app he was about 5 houses down. We called for and he came right back home. Maybe the difference is I am not always looking to pinpoint his exact location. Just trying to see around where he is at. When I have used the app to actually pinpoint him. it worked great. We go out of town next month so I guess I'll see how that goes.

 

[kkachurak]

Thank you all for reminding me why I rarely engage on the internet anymore.

 

[icanhazapple]

They're not designed to 'track' anything.

That's what Apple says, but it's not how people are actually using them.

 

[KevinGrabher]

• THE BIGGEST CON: I paired the AirTag to my phone and then left my wife and dog on a 5 day work trip. After three days, the AirTag started randomly making noise. At first, my wife thought that I was trying to mess with her. But this is actually intended AirTag behavior to alert others to 1) a possible lost item or 2) someone trying to stalk you. There's really no reason an AirTag shouldn't be able to be a part of a "Family". Frustrating.

Your wife can disable the warning and beeping, when she gets the warning or in the Find My App

1. Tap the message.
2. Tap Continue. If you need help finding the AirTag, tap Play Sound.*
3. If the AirTag is attached to an item you're borrowing, you can tap Pause Safety Alerts to turn off "AirTag Detected" notifications for one day. If you're borrowing an AirTag from a member of your Family Sharing group, you can turn off Safety Alerts for one day or indefinitely.

(https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227)

That said, hopefully some sort of AirTag sharing feature will be added sooner or later (it seems this is the most requested feature by far).

 

[Deliro]

Thanks to the OP for their findings, which is 100% what I expected.

It’s supposed to help you find misplaced things. It makes me chuckle when people expect to put them on cars, bikes, and pets and expect it to provide reliable “tracking”.

For a non home use case , I can see these helping me find my keys or backpack at a restaurant or cafe as it would no doubt have many idevices to piggyback on. But if a devious soul were to happen upon my stuff surely I’d never see it again.

Sure there may be times this device could leverage idevices to ping a lost pet, and I guess it’s better than nothing.

 

[TonyC28]

Thank you all for reminding me why I rarely engage on the internet anymore.

Thanks for the review. I was thinking of getting one of these for my dog but I wasn’t sure how useful it would be. Pay no mind to the keyboard warriors.

 

[Pezimak]

We've had an AirTag on our dog now for a few weeks and wanted to report back the pros and cons of using AirTags in this way.

First: It's already well-documented that AirTags are not for tracking pets, and now I see why.

Pros:

• Initially we had a bit of fun by randomly playing the noise once or twice a day. At first, our pupper was a bit confused and it gave us a chuckle. After a few times, however, the dog stopped caring. I would barely call this a "pro". But hey. Worth mentioning.
• Had our dog at a backyard gathering that was not at our home. It was a larger backyard than we were used to and very dark. The owner told us the backyard was completely fenced in, but we weren't 100% sure of that. While enjoying the fire pit and conversation, we would occasionally trigger the noise to find out where in the large backyard our dog was located. NOTE: This only worked sometimes. When the dog was around 40-50 feet or further away from us, the AirTag would not connect and the sound would not play.
• Our house is not large, but sometimes it can be hard to know where the dog is resting his head. We can play the noise to easily find him. But, to be honest, he always comes when called - so barely a pro for us.

Okay, now Cons:

• As far as I can tell, your Apple device has to be close to the AirTag to trigger the noise. There were several times in a large backyard when the AirTag would fail to connect because the dog was more than about 40 feet away.
• The AirTag is currently attached to his collar on a simple Apple leather strap. A thief could easily spot this and rip it off / toss it away, negating any anti-thievery unless we upgraded to a custom AirTag collar that was somewhat more discreet.
• While our dog is not an escape artist or the type to run away from home, we do have the fear that he'll one day chase after a squirrel and become lost. Because AirTags "check in" with nearby iPhones to be found, I find it very unlikely that this would help us find our dog if he was running around the neighborhood. Our dog is very wary and nervous of other people. He probably wouldn't let anyone get close enough to him. It would be extraordinarily lucky for him to ping a nearby iPhone.
• THE BIGGEST CON: I paired the AirTag to my phone and then left my wife and dog on a 5 day work trip. After three days, the AirTag started randomly making noise. At first, my wife thought that I was trying to mess with her. But this is actually intended AirTag behavior to alert others to 1) a possible lost item or 2) someone trying to stalk you. There's really no reason an AirTag shouldn't be able to be a part of a "Family". Frustrating.
• To piggyback off of this: What would happen if my dog escaped and became lost while I wasn't home and was unavailable? My wife would have no way to reach me for help, rendering the AirTag totally useless. I could be on an airplane, in a bad service area, or simply have my phone off.

In short, AirTags are nearly completely useless for tracking pets. There's almost no chance it would help you find your pet if it was stolen, and a very small chance it would help you find your pet in nearly any other situation, including trying to find the pet in a large, fully contained home or yard.

Hopefully Family sharing is made available soon.

Thank you very much for posting your experiences. I was considering purchasing the tag for my dog. I only have an iPhone XR at present though so as I understand wouldn't have the precision location feature. But I think your review has persuaded me to not purchase a tag for this purpose and look at the GPS cellular tracking devices made for dogs. A big price difference but if it works it will be worth it. I'm just not sure about having a device like that in his collar all day.

 

[Lemon Olive]

Sounds like you should of paired the Airtag to your wife's phone and not yours if you regularly travel for work. Ultimately Apple should enable family sharing so a family group can track items.

Sounds like he just shouldn't have done this at all since it is not intended for this at all.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

TLDR;

First: It's already well-documented that AirTags are not for tracking pets, and now I see why.

In short, AirTags are nearly completely useless for tracking pets.

 

[macintoshmac]

We've had an AirTag on our dog now for a few weeks and wanted to report back the pros and cons of using AirTags in this way.

First: It's already well-documented that AirTags are not for tracking pets, and now I see why.

Pros:

• Initially we had a bit of fun by randomly playing the noise once or twice a day. At first, our pupper was a bit confused and it gave us a chuckle. After a few times, however, the dog stopped caring. I would barely call this a "pro". But hey. Worth mentioning.
• Had our dog at a backyard gathering that was not at our home. It was a larger backyard than we were used to and very dark. The owner told us the backyard was completely fenced in, but we weren't 100% sure of that. While enjoying the fire pit and conversation, we would occasionally trigger the noise to find out where in the large backyard our dog was located. NOTE: This only worked sometimes. When the dog was around 40-50 feet or further away from us, the AirTag would not connect and the sound would not play.
• Our house is not large, but sometimes it can be hard to know where the dog is resting his head. We can play the noise to easily find him. But, to be honest, he always comes when called - so barely a pro for us.

Okay, now Cons:

• As far as I can tell, your Apple device has to be close to the AirTag to trigger the noise. There were several times in a large backyard when the AirTag would fail to connect because the dog was more than about 40 feet away.
• The AirTag is currently attached to his collar on a simple Apple leather strap. A thief could easily spot this and rip it off / toss it away, negating any anti-thievery unless we upgraded to a custom AirTag collar that was somewhat more discreet.
• While our dog is not an escape artist or the type to run away from home, we do have the fear that he'll one day chase after a squirrel and become lost. Because AirTags "check in" with nearby iPhones to be found, I find it very unlikely that this would help us find our dog if he was running around the neighborhood. Our dog is very wary and nervous of other people. He probably wouldn't let anyone get close enough to him. It would be extraordinarily lucky for him to ping a nearby iPhone.
• THE BIGGEST CON: I paired the AirTag to my phone and then left my wife and dog on a 5 day work trip. After three days, the AirTag started randomly making noise. At first, my wife thought that I was trying to mess with her. But this is actually intended AirTag behavior to alert others to 1) a possible lost item or 2) someone trying to stalk you. There's really no reason an AirTag shouldn't be able to be a part of a "Family". Frustrating.
• To piggyback off of this: What would happen if my dog escaped and became lost while I wasn't home and was unavailable? My wife would have no way to reach me for help, rendering the AirTag totally useless. I could be on an airplane, in a bad service area, or simply have my phone off.

In short, AirTags are nearly completely useless for tracking pets. There's almost no chance it would help you find your pet if it was stolen, and a very small chance it would help you find your pet in nearly any other situation, including trying to find the pet in a large, fully contained home or yard.

Hopefully Family sharing is made available soon.

So you got firsthand experience with the documentation they provided as to why this is not a pet tracking device. ?

 

[SigurTom]

So is your dog still missing?

 

[Lsav1986]

Its definitely not useless to track your pet. I have one attached to my cat (sewn into his elastic collar), and it has tracked him almost perfectly. Usually he stays right around the house but earlier this week when I check the app he was about 5 houses down. We called for and he came right back home. Maybe the difference is I am not always looking to pinpoint his exact location. Just trying to see around where he is at. When I have used the app to actually pinpoint him. it worked great. We go out of town next month so I guess I'll see how that goes.

I’ve just attached one to my cars collar. So it currently just tells me that 55 mins ago he was home. Will the location update if he came into contact/nearby an iPhone?

 

[KevinGrabher]

I’ve just attached one to my cars collar. So it currently just tells me that 55 mins ago he was home. Will the location update if he came into contact/nearby an iPhone?

Yes, if you check in the app you will see the latest spotted location.
If you want a notification you can separately check that in the Find My app (you'd have to do this after every notification)

 

[mizzourah]

Thank you all for reminding me why I rarely engage on the internet anymore.

Had to laugh at this- the comment totally makes sense - most of these responses are not necessary, especially considering how you framed your original post. We are getting a dog soon and this was a 'I wonder if we should' project - you helped with a lot of our questions - so I appreciate this post. Sorry for many of the other responses.

 

[madrigal77]

I'm getting a puppy in a couple of weeks, and I've got one on order for him. I'm not expecting anything spectacular, but we have a few groups in town that look for lost dogs. If the worst happens and he escapes, this is just a little peace of mind that it might help us at least find his general location. You'd be surprised how far away from home a scared dog can get in just a couple of hours.

Picture of incoming pup because he's cute!

 

[lovefurbaby]

I'm getting a puppy in a couple of weeks, and I've got one on order for him. I'm not expecting anything spectacular, but we have a few groups in town that look for lost dogs. If the worst happens and he escapes, this is just a little peace of mind that it might help us at least find his general location. You'd be surprised how far away from home a scared dog can get in just a couple of hours.

Picture of incoming pup because he's cute!

wow he's so adorable! Keep posting new pictures please.

 

[lovefurbaby]

Got one for my pup for a week, with a secure case attached to his collar. It has tracked him. So far so good.

 

[madrigal77]

wow he's so adorable! Keep posting new pictures please.

Will do!