Tractive GPS & Health Tracker for your furry friends

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It’s no surprise we all love our pets and whether they’re on or off a leash we want to keep them safe. One of the ways of keeping them safe is knowing where they are especially if they accidently get out, get away from the leash, are exploring the neighborhood solo or if you’re off on an adventure away from home. That’s where Tractive GPS dog and cat trackers come in handy. These trackers give me the ability to see their live location, check their activity levels, see their location history and even get wellness alerts. As a cat parent of two, keeping them safe is very important to me and using these trackers helps me do that.

One of my favorite activities to do is to take a forest walk at Point Defiance Park and when she’s up for it, I take my tuxedo cat, Ahsoka. Point Defiance is a park in Tacoma, WA in the northern most point that spans 760 acres and includes 400 acres of old growth forest. It’s peaceful, full of wildlife and the perfect oasis for a quick getaway from the city. When I take Ahsoka we hike to a quiet place off trail without people and we wander around so she can check out the wildlife sights and smells.

To keep her safe while on these walks she wears a harness with a leash and a Tractive GPS cat tracker on a collar. The tracker is a small black box that fits over her collar. Sometimes she may try to bolt off or I’ll let her wander around without a leash in which case having a tracker is helpful in case she gets out of sight. On our last walk, Ahsoka the escape artist, slipped out of her harness and I had to chase her through brush and over fallen trees. Luckily, I was able to catch up with her but if I hadn’t, she at least still had on her collar with the Tractive GPS cat collar and I’d have be able to see exactly where she was in the park. Overall, we really enjoy our walks and hikes and the Tractive GPS collar with worldwide tracking gives me peace of mind knowing where she is.

Pros: Includes location features like live tracking and virtual fences: Once you set everything up in the Tractive GPS app, the tracker can track your pet worldwide with live tracking features and give you alerts when they have entered or exited virtual fences you’ve set up. The app automatically updates their location about every 10 minutes, but you can live track them for certain durations that you set. (But be careful with live tracking as it drains the battery faster). You can also set up virtual fences to get alerts if/when your cat or dog has left or entered a certain area. This is helpful when my cats are outside as I’ll be alerted when they leave the yard and react accordingly.

The Tractive app sends you wellness alerts: Health Alerts are emails that notify me if my cats’ activity or sleep patterns change unusually over time. These changes might signal a health issue. The alerts are helpful if my cat is hiding pain or showing very subtle symptoms as cats often do.

They come in a variety of colors: If color is your thing, lucky you because you can choose from a small variety of colors for dogs and recently they released a couple new colors for cats beyond the basic black.

Cons: Requires a subscription plan: The trackers for both cats and dogs full price range from $49.99 to $99 depending on the size and features. I’ve noticed that they’re frequently on sale, but they also require a subscription to use. The subscription options range from Basic to Premium with pricing from $5 to $13 a month depending on the length of your subscription and whether it’s monthly or yearly. The longer the length, the lower the monthly price.

Overall: After using Tractive GPS for a year now I can confidently say I’m overall really happy with the trackers and the app features and will continue to use them for my peace of mind. It give my cats freedom with safety and gives us the opportunity to explore away from home.