Tagg Pet Tracker

I had the opportunity to test-drive the Tagg Pet Tracker from Verizon Wireless for two months for our dog Sadie. This handy little device attaches to your dog’s collar, and keeps track of where your dog is, and how active she is.

Here’s the tracker clipped on Sadie’s collar. It’s nice and small, and she never bothered it once. (Don’t mind her fur. It’s summer, she’s a Husky cross, and she just started shedding… she won’t be pretty for another 3 weeks…)


Here she is again, looking slightly more respectable. Slightly.


The main goal of the Tagg Pet Tracker is so you know when your dog leaves your property, where she goes when she leaves, and how to find her once she is gone. The Tagg will send you an email and a text message when the dog is outside the Home Tagg Zone (that you set).

Sadie doesn’t actually leave very often, and when she does she just goes to the bottom of the driveway (which I set outside our Home Tagg Zone). So to really see how the tracker works, I took it off her collar and went for a drive.


You can use your computer or the free Tagg app on your mobile device to locate your dog’s current location on a map, or to track your dog’s progress. With the track feature, you will get email and/or text notices (depending on your settings) every 3 minutes with updated location information.

Here’s another location, a few minutes later. The email and text messages will give you an address close to her location.


And a map is included in the email. The blue box is where Sadie (or at least, her tracker) was.


(Love, Sadie. Because she didn’t really mean to run away, and she’ll be so happy to see you again when you find her!)

From the website, you can see the map with Sadie’s location (the orange paw print).


And you can see the trail she took to get to her current location. The orange dots are sort of “check in points” – I got an email to correspond to each of these locations.


Then, when she comes home on her own, or you find her (or bring the tracker back home), you’ll get another email/text saying “I’m back!” Phew! No more worrying!


One other feature I was really excited about was the activity tracking. Sadie’s an old, arthritic Husky cross farm dog. As she gets older, she spends a lot more time sleeping on our porches, so I really didn’t expect that she was getting all that much activity. Boy, was I wrong!

Here is one of her more active days… She racked up 239 Tagg Points (compared to a monthly average of 169).


I love the timeline feature. Who know that between 1:00-3:00am every day Sadie gets up and takes a tour of the farm? I wonder why? (But not enough to get up and spy on her.)


And her total time active really surprised me! This was a busy day for her, clocking in over 3 hours of activity. Most days she gets more like 1.5-2 hours of activity. As the weather has gotten hotter, she has been less active (and who could blame her?). But still, for an old arthritic farm dog, that’s pretty good!


Veterinarians recommend at least 30-60 minutes of activity for dogs daily. This is a great way to see if you dog is hitting that goal! You can also set Tagg Point goals to hit each day. These point totals are easy to see on the Tagg mobile app, so it’s easy to keep track of how your dog (and you!) are doing during the day.

Here’s Sadie’s last 30 days of activity…


And a snapshot of the two months that we had the tracker. Some of the dips are from when the battery needed to be charged and was on the docking station instead of her collar, and some of the dips are on the hotter days when she just hung out in the shade. But, overall, a pretty good activity level for our old girl!


I used this on our dog, but it could also be used for any other animal. This would be a great tool for cattle. They tend to stay in herds, so not every cow would need a tracker, but a tracker or two on the troublemaker cows would alert you if they broke through a fence and were off wandering around. The Tagg Pet Tracker would also be great for a sick animal – we could monitor the activity levels of animals we were worried about to be sure they were moving around to get food, water, and a little exercise even if they aren’t feeling great.

What systems do you have in place to find your dog if she goes missing? Collars, tags, and microchips are very important, but none of those can tell you where your runaway pet is right now!

{Thanks to Verizon Wireless for letting me use the Tagg Pet Tracker for two months. All thoughts, opinions, and photographs are my own.}

Homemade Dog Biscuits

One of my favorite things about Gooseberry Patch’s new cookbook, “Garfield… Recipes with Cattitude!” is that it includes a recipe for cat treats and one for dog treats. We can’t forget about our fluffy friends!

I am not one to normally make homemade snacks for my pets, but I had to give these recipes a try. And boy, were these dog biscuits a hit!

Our dog Kodi

We lost a very good friend last week.

A day on the farm

Just another fall day on the farm. The dogs are lounging outside in the sun.

My dog has too much fur

Sadie is part Husky. She is incredibly fuzzy.

We had a small porch on our old house, and Sadie never came up the steps. I’m not sure she knew how. And she has bad hips (she’s around 12 years old), so it was hard for her to climb steps. Now she’s on arthritis medication every day (and feeling great!). And Buddy came over not too long ago. He taught her how to climb steps.

Carhartt for the boys

Er, men.

Last fall, we had a great partnership with Carhartt where the Real Farmwives got to show off some of Carhartt’s new women’s line. Now it’s the guys’ turn… Carhartt partnered with the Real Farmwives again for the men in their life (the Real Farmers? The Real Farmhusbands?) – the guys got a chance to try out some of Carhartt’s spring line early!

And want to know the best news? Carhartt and the Real Farmwives have a giveaway for you! Check out the Real Farmwives website and enter for a chance to win some Carhartt gear for your guy!

Hubby Doc tried out the Astoria Jacket in black. He’ll be the first to tell you that he’s a big guy, and needs a big jacket. We did have a bit of a hard time finding a jacket that was available in the 2X size he was looking for. But, Carhartt came through with this choice.

Even though this March has been unbelievable warm, it still is cool in the mornings and evenings around here. And I may have mentioned before that it gets just a tad windy up on our hill, so the jacket has come in handy on a few occasions. The farm dogs take their pills/treats every night. (They’re such good girls!)

Attack of the blackbirds

Every once in a while, we are completely overcome by blackbirds. They swoop in, hang out for a little while, make a lot of noise, and then swoop back out again.

They love to hang out with the cows. The cows don’t seem to mind.


All of a sudden, for no particular reason, they’ll all take to the sky, all at once. It’s pretty dramatic to be right in the middle.

That invisible fence sure is invisible!

We have two outside dogs. They usually live inside an invisible fence. They have plenty of room outside, two cozy dog houses, and a great shade tree. I don't know why they wouldn't want to hang out there all the time.

But they don't.

The invisible fence stopped working. So now they go wherever they want. Lucky for us, they don't leave the property, but they sure are enjoying having the run of the place.

They hang out in the holly bushes in front of the house.

Wordless Wednesday: Joy!

(This is a borrowed dog.  Spay or neuter your pets, please!)

Wordless Wednesday

Gardening carnage

Yesterday I decided the weeds in my peonies and irises were out of control and were driving me crazy.  I mean, really, is this not ridiculous?  The weeds are taking over the world!



But I showed them who is boss!



Ahh...  much better already!  I cut the bulk of that drama down by half!  Now it's just for those dead blossoms hanging on...  (It was starting to get a bit dark by this time.  I had to do some serious photo-tweaking to make this come out.)

While I was at it, I also deadheaded the roses that are just outside of this picture, too.  And this is what the carnage looked like by the time I was finished.

Would you believe this only took me 30 minutes?  Pictures and everything!  And the dogs barked at me the whole time.  You can see them in the background of some of the pictures.  They don't like it when I go in "their" yard.  I just ignore them.  They don't scare me.

They don't scare me...  much.  Except at feeding time.

But that is some drama for a different post...