Because I work from home, and because my dogs are the best dogs, we are in contact all day, every day. We're a three-headed, ten-legged Hydra, rotating around each other as we move from my office to the living room to the kitchen. Whatever I do, they're usually there too—whether that's sleeping at night, pacing around my living room, or feeding my kids.
And unfortunately, whatever happens to me, usually happens to them too. Last night, a friend saw my dogs after a long absence. “Hey you!” he said, scratching one of my dog's ears as she wagged her tail and sat at his feet. “Um...you look like you put on a little weight.”
I winced. Was he talking to me or my dog? Having two kids has made getting exercise just a little harder for all of us. At least I'm not scarfing peanut butter sandwich scraps from under my son's high chair.
So I put a fitness tracker on my dog. It’s harder to take long, rambling walks through the woods now, but it’s still important to make sure that my dogs are getting the exercise they need. And as someone who spends most of every day sitting at a desk, I like, and need, frequent reminders to move.
The Whistle 3 is a small GPS tracker and motion sensor that your dog wears on its collar. It’s small, easy to wear and use, and has a long battery life. Whether you’re home with your pets or hire a dog-walker, the Whistle 3 is an easy, comparatively affordable way to help make sure your dogs are both safe and getting the exercise they need.
The Price is Right
At $80, the Whistle 3 is more affordable than the spendy Link by AKC. It’s also smaller, less obtrusive, and less luxurious-looking. Rather than a rich leather collar with a click-in unit, the Whistle 3 is a small plastic box that comes in three different colors. It is 1.82 inches long and 1.45 inches high. It comes with a plastic holder that uses a rubber loop to attach to my dog's collar. On my 70-pound heeler mix, it’s barely noticeable.
The Whistle 3 uses a combination of cellular service, GPS, and Wi-Fi to pinpoint your pet at all times. As with the Link collar, you need to subscribe to a monthly or yearly service to access AT&T’s cellular network. The subscription service is $10 per month, but gets more affordable with a one- or two-year agreement.
To use the Whistle 3, you have to download the simple app. To designate a safe zone on your home’s Wi-Fi network, look up your address on their location map and draw a perimeter around your property. We're not the Beckhams or anything, but my single-family house is on a perfectly respectable 0.15 acres. The Whistle app warned me that my safe zone was a little smaller than they prefer, in order to avoid false breach notifications.
Nevertheless, it begrudgingly let me set my minute patch of dirt as the safe zone. So far, it works. In a week of testing, I haven’t gotten any false breach alerts. Still, this may be an issue if you live in an apartment, or on an even smaller property.
The unit took two hours to charge. One charge lasted me five days, but it probably would’ve lasted longer if we hadn’t been traveling. If you’re connected to your home’s Wi-Fi network, the Whistle 3 turns on Power Save mode and stops GPS tracking to reserve battery life.
For four of those five days, my dog and I were traveling away from home. When we have access to my home’s Wi-Fi network, the power usage is much lower. As of today, we’ve been home for three days with at least one long walk each day, and the battery is still at 79 percent.
I can check the battery life on the app, as well as add multiple owners to each Whistle, or add multiple Whistles to each account. You can set your pet’s age, weight, and breed, and set a daily activity goal. If you don't know how many minutes your pet should be exercising, the app will predict one for you based on the information you provide in your pet's profile. It suggested thirty minutes of activity a day for my ten-year-old dog, a low bar that I ended up raising.
