Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsNot perfect, but it saved my dog's life
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2022
Updates:
1.When the dogs start howling at the coyotes at 6:30 in the morning, I play one dog’s AirTag once or twice and they all stop howling.
2. We got a new black cat who is famous for hiding and not being found. I trained him to come out when I beep his AirTag. Sometimes I just use the find my app to find him rather than calling him out. Once he got out of the house at night and ran into the desert. I was able to track him by beeping his AirTag. He’s so black I would not have been able to find him without it. There are so many predators out here that it may have saved his life.
3. I got an iPhone 13 ProMax. I’d hoped I could use the AirTag to find my car in a parking lot. It doesn’t really work for that. You’re better off just putting a pin in your map to help you find your car. My phone only starts sensing the tag when I’m within 15 feet or so. I usually have to be a lot closer than that for it to point towards the AirTag. So it works to find the cat in the house, but not my car. This is a great device to tell you approximately where something is, but it’s not perfect. Oddly, if it’s too dark, it will tell me it needs more light. I sure don’t understand that.
Now the original review on how it saved my dog’s life…
Got Air Tags for each of my dogs. Even decided to update my phone to better track them, but that's not happening until April. We live in the wilderness. There are very few people out here and fewer iphones. When our dogs go exploring, we can't find them via the AirTag (though one time my dog appearantly came across a hiker with an iphone as she registered as being on the trail.) However, when my husband goes biking and takes the dog, as long as they have cellphone coverage, we can see where they're at.
This morning I took Annie with me to pick up a Home Depot curbside order. Ran into Target to get some lettuce. Came out and Annie was gone. It became appearant I left the back windows open too much and she jumped out.
The Air Tag had issues. It would tell me where she was, so I would drive there, but by the time I got there, she was gone. It wouldn't refresh and look for her, so I kept missing her. Called Apple to see if they could track her, but they said they're not meant for a moving target. I filed her as lost in the app, but once she blipped on my phone, it automatically shut off the "Notify when found" even though I hadn't found her, she'd just been in the vicinity. So while I was frantically trying to find her, I was having to set the app to notify me when it found her. However, it let me know about where she was so I knew how to focus my search.
She spent most of her day in the a wild, dry river wash where the tag wouldn't signal because it's below street level and there were no iphones down there. (Though when I was near her a couple times it didn't ding. One of those times was when I ran into really busy traffic to stop cars from hitting her, so we were in cell zone and she was close to my phone.) Met some really nice people (a mall security guard and some homeless people) that spent hours helping me find her. Plus a dad and daughter on bikes that just happened to see her. Three times she and I looked at each other and she ran away from me. I've heard dogs go into survival mode after about a week on the road and will run from their families, but this was only a few hours. (She was feral when I got her so maybe she just reverted faster.) Finally, at sunset, I went home. Except she kept beeping off the AirTag. (She only did that once an hour during the day and now it was more frequent.) I worried she'd been hit by a car.
I drove back to the mall with Harvey, her dog-BFF. For three hours she circled around me and Harvey. She was afraid of us, but she was also staying near and watching. When she went away, Harvey and I went into the van to escape the cold. Then the air tag would ding. We'd get out of the car and play "Where's Waldo" in the dark. Eventually I'd see her just standing there watching us from the shadows. Then she'd disappear agin. Then the tag said she was back. I wondered if this would be easier with a newer iphone as mine is only a 7Plus.
At 12:40 a.m., she walked towards the van. I partially opened the door and stuck my head out. "Hi, Annie." And finally, she recognized me. After 13 hours of driving, walking, riding my bike (my husband brought me my bike,) and sitting out in the cold so she could see me, she finally recognized me. She wagged her tail, came up to me, and got in the van.
The AirTag had issues, but it gave me ideas as to where she was. Without the tag, I would not have been able to find her. A few years ago our rescued ex-bait dog stayed with my parents while we were on vacation. They live a couple hours away. Shortly after we got home, the dog jumped their fence. I drove up immediately to try and find her. We looked for two weeks. She was sighted so many different places miles apart (Facebook has great dog-finding groups.) Saddly, she was hit and killed. If she'd had an AirTag, we would have known about where she was and we would have found her. I hope the AirTag works better when I get my Iphone 13 in a couple weeks. However, even not working great, it saved my dog's life.
