Story
Found dog but missing items
Two weeks ago I decided to do the Hoctathon challenge run with our four-legged companion Maggie. She gets distracted and has run off before, so I kept her on the leash. About 1.5 miles in, I dropped the retractable leash and she was off. I wasn’t initially worried thinking that it would get snagged, so I went through the brush in her direction, but after one minute I could not see her at all.
After ten minutes I was really worried, thinking she would get snagged, so I call my spouse to come and help look. Pretty scary thinking about the consequences.
About one hour later I found her, probably a half-mile away from the last seen location. She was without her halter and leash! Smart girl, and we were obviously greatly relieved, but I was in the dog house for losing her.
So I’ve been back to Hammond Hill twice, trying to locate the lost items which included an Apple AirTag. The AirTag has a distance of about 30-100 feet outdoors. No luck so far.
Attached is my map with the original search (red), last week’s search (yellow), and today’s Hoctathon run (violet). I marked where Maggie was lost and where I eventually found her (or rather she found me). I figure the AirTag battery will last another month or two so I may keep trying.
The AirTag device setting is now set to “lost” so it is possible that someone else at Hammond with a smart phone may get a signal and I could be notified. That would be a hoot.
I don’t want a GPS/cellular dog tracker with monthly subscription, but am going to try to hack together a dog tracker that should work over 1km (using Arduino, LoRaWAN, and GPS). It would be great if I could run with Maggie and she is off-leash, since she would love it more and I’d be a bit less worried about my balance without the leash.