# GPS trackers for LGD's. Has anyone used them?



## Jellybelly (Jun 12, 2019)

On July 4th one of our LGD's totally freaked out and scaled the fence from the fireworks. (not our fireworks) She was gone for 4 days and finally came home. I saw where there are GSP trackers that go on the collars. I'm not thrilled about collars on my dogs but man, that was terrible when she was gone. I was just wondering if anyone has ever used any and if so what kind. There are so many different ones out there


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## Calistar (Jan 16, 2017)

I use trackers on my outdoor cats. My lgd had one too until the battery died and she lost it in the goat pen. Mine aren't GPS. GPS looked like it would be unreliable (for a country setting) and came with a monthly subscription fee. The ones I have are the LoCATor collars from com-spec.com and they are a radio frequency scanner like biologists use to track wildlife. The scanner beeps and gets louder as you get closer to your target. Range is a couple blocks in the city or a mile in the country.

We have coyotes around so I need to be able to bring my cats in at night, but they don't always want to come. As long as I remember to change the battery, I've never been unable to find a cat with the tracker. The LGD hasn't tried to escape so I haven't bothered replacing her tracker but if it was a concern I absolutely would. It was a bit of an investment upfront to buy the scanner and all the collars, but that tracker is seriously the most important thing I've ever bought when it comes to my animals' safety. They make dog collars, cat collars, and a multi-purpose clip that you can clip onto anything. I got the clip last time for my dog, but if I did it again I'd get the collar and use it in conjunction with my dog's regular collar. (Their collars are too thin to serve as a functional collar for a large dog.)


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## Fastowl (Sep 26, 2020)

I am new to the forum but I was intrigued by the question. We run a fair amount of spanish goats on our ranch in the Texas Hill Country as do our neighbors. Most around here use guard dogs with Pyrenees the most common. The ranches around here are rather large and most run the goats year round in section size pastures or larger and do some round ups once in a while to cull billies and older nannies.

Texas A&M is active in the region to improve raising sheep, goats and cattle. As part of this they run sheep and goats (and cattle) on a large ranch next door to us to test many things regarding reproduction, predators, etc. 2-3 years ago they ran a series of tests on their ranch as well as a number of other ranches in the region to test the effectiveness of guard dogs to improve survivability of sheep and goats in the presence of guard dogs as compared to not having them. Some of results are posted at sanangelo.tamu.edu/research/lgd/ (sorry can't post entire link as I am new to the forum). Some of the ranches used GPS collars on the GD's.

A&M also ran a year long test next door where they trapped and released some coyotes after collaring them with GPS along with collaring their GD's with GPS to study how they interacted. Dr. John Tomecek was in charge of this experiment. He has a number of papers published about the GD's and they often run them with GPS collars: wfsc.tamu.edu/people/tomecek-john/

To the OP, I would reach out to Dr. Tomecek and ask about specific collars. He is a great guy and very personable and helpful. You can get his contact info at the above web location.


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## Damfino (Dec 29, 2013)

We put a Garmin GPS collar on our Anatolian Shepherd since he's super inclined to wander. That thing will track him for miles. The handheld device has a nice topo map on it so we can see exactly where he is. We live in mountainous country and the only places where we occasionally lose him are down in the gravel pit and under our aluminum horse trailer. Pluto's trail on the map shows us exactly where we lost contact so if we watch for a few minutes he pops back onto the screen as soon as the receiver picks the signal back up. I set the tracker to alert us when Pluto leaves his 300-yard radius. If he's off our property I can beep him and he comes back. If he ignores the beep I can zap him and then he doesn't ignore us! It works very, very well. And if I'm gone from home and he wanders while I'm away, I can see where he went on the tracker screen. It's a Garmin Alpha 100 I think. Not cheap, but very well-made and works incredibly well. There's no subscription fee for that one.


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