I have had friends that lost prized hunting dogs, and it was not a pleasant experience for any of the parties involved. Now Garmin may help keep tabs on your pets (actually hunting animals or not) with the new Garmin DC 30 GPS Dog Collar, which is part of the Astro 220 Dog Tracking System.
The collar is an upgrade of the DC 20 unit, and now sports an impressive 7 mile range along with the ability to tell what direction the dog is facing. The information from the collar is picked up and displayed by the Astro hand unit, which can track up to 10 collars at one time.
The DC-30 GPS Dog Collar sells for $199 itself, or as part of the the Astro 220 combo (pictured above) for $650. The unit should be available in the third quarter of 2008.
The DC-30 collar will operate for 17-36 hours on a charge, so running out of juice for the tracking system will not be much of an issue. However, actually catching the wayward dog hot on the trail of something unexpected is an exercise left to the human tracker, and I wish you the best of luck.
