This device is attached to your pet after setting a "home" location and a maximum distance the pet is allowed away from your home. When your cat or dog strays out of the allowed area (determined by GPS positioning), it will emit an ultrasonic tone of a volume sufficient to "disturb" the animal. What prevents this from driving the animal crazy, is that the tone quiets when the animal is headed in a direction towards home, and gets louder or more frequent (more bothersome), when the pet is moving away from "home". In a desire to avoid the bothersome noise, they should be persuaded back to the owner's home.-- trekbody, Feb 07 2003 Garmin's Astro http://www.popularm...y_news/4276459.html [theircompetitor, Aug 06 2008] o.k. as long as you do not live in an area that has ROADS and CARS.-- po, Feb 07 2003 RESPONSE to roads & cars comment - Don't you think strays get hit by cars anyway? Even without being directed home?-- trekbody, Feb 07 2003 they already are using this on cattle in new mexico...you can manage a ranch...with out building expensive fences-- swice, Feb 07 2003 dogs are aware of roads and cars unless being *disturbed* in some way.-- po, Feb 07 2003 If the pet doesn't want to be there, why force them?-- ato_de, Feb 07 2003 Why not let the agony begin at the very moment said pet hits the boundary of his roaming area? No need to lead him back home in that event. Also, this somewhat baked by 'electronic fence' devices which act similarly when a pet nears a set border, although they admittedly lack the high-tech flair and expense of GPS.-- X2Entendre, Feb 08 2003 Insert obligatory "GPS is highly inaccurate in urban areas and doesn't work indoors, under bridges, in tunnels, or many other places" rant.-- pottedstu, Feb 08 2003 Great, in urban areas it only needs to work out of doors, thus overcoming the accuracy problem. In the country I'd have thought it was accurate enough to make the mutt turn tail and head home.
Alternatively, you could have it release a small aerosol puff of the scent of the pet's favourite food, making it want to head home for some grub.-- egbert, Feb 08 2003 I would substitute the noise maker by a biscuit thrower that would throw small biscuits in the house's direction (like that story about the kids who used the bread crums to mark their way home)-- PauloSargaco, Apr 07 2003 How about a web interface where you can map out detailed walk paths -- so you can have the dog shit on the neighbor's yard?-- theircompetitor, Jan 03 2004 //they already are using this on cattle in new mexico...you can manage a ranch...with out building expensive fences//
A GPS collar on every cow is cheaper than a fence?-- Bukkakinator, Aug 08 2008 Perhaps instead of an alarm, his master's voice, saying, "Here boy!" With an inbuilt compass and stereo speakers, this could be designed to call the dog every time he turned in the wrong direction, whenever he was beyond the allowed area.
Wouldn't work on every dog, though. Mine accelerates in the opposite direction when I call him.-- ldischler, Aug 08 2008 random, halfbakery