SpotOn GPS Dog Fence Review
A Portable Fence in a Collar
Disclaimer: SpotOn sent us a unit of the GPS Dog Fence free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.
If you’re a dog owner, then you can probably understand exactly how I feel when I say that my dog is my child; words cannot describe how precious he is to me. When I was offered the chance to review the SpotOn collar, I was very intrigued because I have always thought it would be nice to have a GPS-tracking device for my dog.
The SpotOn collar is more than a GPS collar, though: its main feature is that it’s a portable invisible fence. What’s cool about it is that, unlike traditional electric fences, you don’t have to have any wires buried in your yard. The fence works via GPS and everything can be set up easily on your smartphone in the SpotOn app. My dog, unfortunately, does not stay in the yard unless we keep him on a leash or use an e-collar, so I thought the SpotOn collar could potentially be a useful tool for keeping my fur baby safe.
Retail Price: $999.00
Takes Time to Reap Rewards
You can’t just slap the SpotOn collar on your dog and expect them to stay in the yard. There is a training process involved, but luckily, it is straightforward. Not only that, but SpotOn offers a free 30-minute consultation with a professional dog trainer should you find yourself struggling.
Does It Work?
Anyone considering this collar probably wants to know, above all else, does it work? The answer is that it depends on the dog. My dog is a German wirehaired pointer, an extremely high-energy and prey-driven breed. Despite that, we did find success with the SpotOn GPS fence. If you think an electric fence would work for your dog, then there’s no reason SpotOn wouldn’t.
However, just like a traditional invisible fence, there are some limitations. While I have found success with the collar keeping my dog in the yard, it isn’t foolproof. If your dog sees something they want to chase and they are more interested in chasing than they are afraid of the shock they will feel upon leaving the fence, then they’re going to leave. Luckily, I haven’t had this happen, but I also prefer to use the collar only during the day and only when I am able to supervise my dog.
If you pay for a subscription, then you can have access to tracking. This way, if your dog does leave the yard, you’ll be able to track them on your phone via the SpotOn app. My experience with the tracking is limited because my dog did not escape (a good thing), but using it in the yard, it did seem to be pretty accurate. It even told me how many feet away from me my dog was. The only thing I have to nitpick about it is that it updates the collar’s position every five seconds rather than in true real time. My dog is a fast runner, and he can get surprisingly far in just five seconds. On the bright side, because this collar works with GPS, it can track your dog’s location no matter how many miles away they are.
The Training Process
You can’t just slap the SpotOn collar on your dog and expect them to stay in the yard. There is a training process involved, but luckily, it is straightforward. Not only that, but SpotOn offers a free 30-minute consultation with a professional dog trainer should you find yourself struggling.
I found the initial training for the collar to be fairly simple. You essentially walk your dog around the perimeter of your property and when the warning tones for the fence go off, you coax them back inside the fence and offer a treat. The next step involves letting your dog decide to make that choice themself: if they don’t turn around upon hearing the warning tones, they’ll be corrected by the fence (at which point they get another treat if they turn around and come back after the correction), if they do turn around, then once again, you reward them.
Simple, right? However, I had a little trouble with my dog once I gave him more freedom and let him off the six foot leash. I noticed that he wouldn’t respect the warning tones and would often walk out of the fence. Usually, he would turn around once he got corrected, but a few times, he just kept going. Of course, I had the situation under control so my dog did not escape, but these results weren’t promising for me and I wasn’t sure what to do about it.
SpotOn set up a call between me and a trainer, and I learned that I needed to increase the level of correction; the collar allows you to set static correction between 0 and 30. There is also a vibration option, but those sorts of things have never worked for my dog. I’ll admit, aversives are not my bread and butter. My family does have an e-collar that we use to allow our dog to run free, and while I kind of hate the idea of zapping my dog, my dog always gets super excited and happy when we take it off the hook by the door because it means he gets to run. The e-collar has a beeper which I use to warn him to return to the yard; I rarely ever have to correct him, and I don’t have to use a very high level of correction to get him to listen, either.
The SpotOn collar, though, won’t work reliably unless it’s at a high enough level that your dog absolutely doesn’t want to experience it. It needs to be uncomfortable. The trainer compared it to learning not to touch a hot stove. I have to be honest that I was a little discouraged when hearing this as I was hoping to keep the correction at a fairly low level. It’s definitely not ideal, but at the end of the day, a temporary discomfort is far better than a dog escaping and getting hit by a car, eating poison left out in someone else’s yard, or any number of dangers that could befall them should they leave the safety of home.
So, I spent some more time testing out which correction level would actually discourage my dog from leaving the boundary, as the lower levels seemed to be little more than a tickle or an itch to him. Once I found the right level, my dog did a much better job of staying in the yard, and I could tell that he was hearing the tones and making the choice to respect the fence.
Features I Wish It Had
The SpotOn collar does everything it claims to do: it acts as an electric fence to keep your dog in the yard. Should you choose to pay for a subscription, it offers GPS tracking to show you your dog’s location. However, there are some features this collar doesn’t have that I wish it did.
First of all, I wish that the collar came with your dog’s name and information printed or engraved on it. Perhaps they could add a metal plate or print directly onto the plastic. The reason I say this is because the collar is a bit thick, so most people would prefer to use it on its own. Since not everyone will opt to pay for tracking, if their dog ever did get out, they would probably want their information somewhere on the collar. You could perhaps fit a keyring with a name tag on it through one of the empty holes meant for adjusting the collar, but it’s not ideal.
Second of all, I wish this collar doubled as a remote-controlled e-collar. If I were a potential buyer rather than someone who received this to review, I would probably be willing to pay an extra $500 or more if that’s what it took to get such a feature. The weakness of an invisible fence is that once your dog goes through it, that’s it. They’re gone. If they don’t listen to you when you call them, then they’re probably not coming back. Just because this collar works most of the time and just because it offers tracking doesn’t mean your dog isn’t at risk of getting hit by a car or having something bad happen to them should they get stimulated enough to run right through the fence. The concept of a GPS fence collar is truly a brilliant one, but I feel that we could take brilliant to genius if it also worked as an e-collar.
As it stands, you can kind of use your phone to turn this into a remote-controlled e-collar. There is a feature that allows you to test the static correction, so this will initiate the shock on the collar. However, because it works by Bluetooth connection, it will only work if you are standing within 30-50 feet of your dog, so it isn’t at all reliable. For comparison, a Dogtra e-collar has a range of about 1.5 miles. The SpotOn collar does not double as an e-collar, but it would be so much better if it did. Though I have used this collar on its own and had success, I just can’t shake the discomfort of knowing that if my dog leaves the fence, I won’t have the control I need to get him back and keep him safe.
The App Needs Work
The biggest issue I had with this product was the app. The collar itself plays the warning tones so quietly that you can only hear them if you are standing right next to your dog. This is a choice by the manufacturer to preserve your dog’s hearing. Dogs have amazing hearing, so there’s no need to blow out their ears with a loud tone.
However, this means that, without the app, you can’t actually tell when your dog is approaching the fence or hearing the warning tones. Without the app, it’s quite hard to tell if your dog has left the fence at all. The app is set, by default, to play on your phone the same warning tones your dog hears. The problem with this is that the app can be glitchy at times.
I’ve had more than one occasion where the app just didn't play the tones at all, even though I knew my dog must be nearing the edge of the fence. Because this fence is GPS, some drift can be expected, which is one of its weaknesses in terms of knowing if your dog is actually in or out of the fence. The fence can’t be expected to be completely static. So, if the tones on your phone don’t play properly, you end up questioning if the GPS drifted and your dog is still inside, if it didn't and your dog is ignoring the fence, or if the fence is just not working at all. The glitch where the app doesn’t play the tones has happened even when my phone says it is connected to the collar via Bluetooth. Usually, closing the app and reopening it fixes it.
Aside from the app just not playing the tones sometimes, other times they get glitched. Your dog will go toward the fence, the tone starts playing, and then it just doesn't stop. You have to completely shut down the app and reopen it. I think perhaps the worst thing that happens, though, is when you’re paying for the subscription and you don’t get notified that your dog left the fence or the notification comes late. Though my dog never truly escaped, I had plenty of moments where he left the fence (at least, before I spoke with a trainer and found more success). I would say I got the notification most of the time, but there were some times where it was radio silent, or where I got it like five minutes after my dog had left. Also, the default notification sound for an escape is the default tone on your phone. I had to change mine to be irritating or it was too easy to ignore on accident. I’m not sure if this is possible, but it’d be nice if the app came with an obnoxious alert tone off the bat so you’d never miss the “your dog left the yard” messages. Overall, I definitely think the app could be improved upon.
final thoughts
If you’re in the market for an e-fence, the SpotOn GPS Fence could be a great choice. With an MSRP of about $1000, it’s a lot cheaper than a traditional electric fence would be. Because fences are set up on your phone using GPS technology, you could also take the collar with you and set up fences whenever you travel with your dog. A yearly subscription plan costs a little under $100 and allows you to track your dog’s position, which would come in handy if your dog ever escaped. The subscription is for tracking only as the fence itself works without it.
As for whether or not I personally will keep using this collar, I’m honestly not sure. I think I prefer the more traditional e-collar as it gives me peace of mind knowing that I always have control over my dog. I can also set the e-collar’s correction at significantly lower levels than the SpotOn collar and still get my dog back in the yard should he wander too far. Though the SpotOn collar did keep my dog in the yard, I still worry about wildlife like deer or ducks tempting him through it, at which point there’s nothing I can do. At the same time, the SpotOn collar is really convenient. Normally, I have to supervise my dog quite strictly because he will wander into the neighbors’ yards even if he’s wearing an e-collar. It’s hard to do any sort of yard work or other task if my dog is outside because I have to focus so much on supervising him. With the SpotOn collar, I do still prefer to keep an eye on him, but it does the work of keeping him in the yard for me so that I can give more of my attention to other tasks. I also hope to do a better job training any future dogs I adopt so that I’ll never have to use an aversive product like this in the first place. So, I can see the benefits of the SpotOn collar and I don’t think it’s a bad product, but it probably isn’t quite the right product for me.
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