Meet the Game-Changing GPS Collar That Lets Dogs Truly Roam

Anne Briggs is out in the early Tennessee morning, riding across warm, sunlit fields and breathing the crisp air of the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s horrible. Her Colorado Mountain Dogs have escaped, again, and could be roaming anywhere over her farm’s hundreds of acres. Finally, she spots the two furry offenders, Johnny and June, and escorts them back to the barn. Her work schedule is pretty much shot. Sometimes, her dogs take days to turn up.

Anne is always worried about them—and her livelihood which relies on livestock guardian dogs to protect her goats and alpacas from predators. She persisted for three years in search of a solution. Now, she lets Johnny, June, and her animals in the open pasture without any fencing. Anne’s search-and-rescue efforts are as easy as opening an app. 

This is SpotOn GPS Fence, a complete tracking and fencing system for dogs that works more reliably and effortlessly than any GPS collar on sale today.

“That is really going to be a game-changer for the farm,” Anne says. “We get the animals out of the barn and heavy-use area, we stop paying for feed and hay in the barn, and we get the animals back out on pasture and fully protected by the dogs.”

Perhaps you’re a dog owner like Anne who can’t justify building miles of physical barriers on her property or losing precious work (and sleep) when her dogs wander. Or maybe you’ve used a buried wire fence in the past, and are tired of the wear and tear and repairing broken wires. Either way, SpotOn was made to give dog owners the reliability of a traditional fence with the convenience expected in today’s wireless world. Designed and assembled in the United States, SpotOn appears like a conventional rubber collar. It fits dogs with neck sizes ranging from 10 to 26 inches and the waterproof enclosure makes cleanup a breeze. But inside is a sophisticated GPS antenna that connects to four satellite constellations—as many as 30 individual satellites—at the same time. No other collar has this level of pinpoint accuracy and built-in redundancy, even under thick brush and tree coverage.

“We want dogs to roam free and be safe,” says Sung Vivathana, inventor and SpotOn vice president of engineering. “We worked with pro dog trainers. We wanted to make sure what we were doing was effective for owners and good for dogs.”

The challenge seemed insurmountable. How do you design a collar filled with complex electronics that can withstand the rough and tumble nature of a dog’s daily life? The SpotOn team in New Hampshire did just that. The three base plates containing the patented GPS antenna, 4G LTE modem, Bluetooth transmitter, inertial sensors, battery, static correction plate, and central processor are very sturdy and waterproof. Yet they’re integrated and shaped to curve naturally with a dog’s neck and weigh only a few ounces. There’s a single button for power and one LED to indicate the charging and connectivity status. An included USB and wall charger requires just a little over an hour to keep the collar active for nearly 24 hours.

The accuracy is, in a word, uncanny. SpotOn lets you plot a fence in two convenient ways: Walk while the app tracks your movement, or draw the boundaries on the app’s map. Either method proved to be accurate within a few feet. SpotOn GPS Fence is designed to provide three alerts in sequence—a beep when approaching the boundary, a louder beep at the boundary, and a vibration when stepping over the line. In repeated tests, the precision of the alerts is what sets SpotOn apart and helps dog owners feel more confident using a GPS collar. As an alternative to vibration, SpotOn offers static correction with 30 levels—and to reward good behavior, the collar never corrects when a dog is returning home.

What’s most convenient is the ability to save 20 unique fences on the app and set the collar to that specific fence within seconds. Imagine visiting a friend’s home or going out to a new park without having to worry about your dog running off. Even better is the customization within each fence. Want to create a fence within a fence? It’s easy to create “keep out” areas such as a pond or a driveway. How about day and night modes within the same area? SpotOn is the only product that lets you share the same GPS coordinates so you can, for example, restrict your dog’s movement at night and let him run longer during the day. Live tracking is another lifesaver. On the app, owners can see position updates every few seconds to allow them to track their dog.

Since debuting in 2019, SpotOn is already in its second generation and continues to advance the product by adding new features and enhancements. Vivathana says his team is hard at work to reduce the size of the electronic components and training its AI to better anticipate when a dog is resting, for example, to preserve battery life. It’s an ever-improving product from a company that wants dog owners to feel peace of mind.

“Our customer service members work in the office space next to me,” he says. “If a collar gets damaged, we’ll assess it together in real-time with the customer and we’ll overnight a loaner while we wait for it to return to make repairs.”

For Johnny and June—and for all dogs and their owners who love being outside—life just got a whole lot better with SpotOn.

Sponsored by SpotOn GPS Fence.