content: Really?  Sorry.  I don't have a plan.  Copy and Paste, here it is. Santa Fe New Mexican Article by: Hirsch Wilson EDIT:  All those deletes are mine.  It said I was doing that too fast, wait 30 seconds, I did and little did I know it was really posting but kept saying I was doing too many posts when in fact it would not even take my first one according to the message but... it really was. I was sprinting down the road staring at my phone. “That way!” I yelled to Sully. “She’s in the arroyo … Nope she’s up on the road traveling north! Wait! She’s turned around! She’s coming right toward us! Act natural!” Nellie trotted up the road, looked at us strangely and walked up to the house. For the first time ever, we had successfully followed her on one of her jaunts. There were high-fives all around. Here is how this all began. Nellie, like many dogs, is a professional escape artist. She’s not the type of dog who goes through screened-windows, opens doors or digs under fences. We’ve lived with all of those. Nellie is crafty. She waits for the moment when a door is left open for a second by a befuddled human. Then bam! She’s gone. She’s across the road, down the arroyo, visiting homes, drinking out of bird baths, doing her strange barky-jumpy ceremonial thing in front of people, and when she’s had enough, she returns home and sits by our front door. A couple of decades ago this would be thought of as normal dog behavior. Just like us as kids, if we were home by dark, then no harm, no foul. But times have changed, as has our relationship with our dogs. (And, I guess, our kids). Nowadays, I want to know our dogs are safe and home, and if Nellie escapes, I want be able to find her. In this pursuit, we’ve watched the development of GPS tracking systems for dogs. They started out as expensive, bulky gear sprouting antennas. Nellie would never wear an antenna. She sees herself as a queen, not some kind of space alien. But now the tracking devices have come down in price and size, so we thought we’d give one try. We purchased a Tagg GPS Tracker for a little less than $80 and a monthly service contract for $6.95. I will be deducting these items from my taxes, so if the IRS calls you, just play along. The Tagg is small and it snaps onto the collar. Nellie sniffed it once and then ignored it. A good sign! It took a few minutes to register the device on the website and download the app for my phone. We adjusted the “Home Zone” on the map — the device warns us when Nellie is outside the zone. Then, we were ready for our first experiment. The humans huddled for a moment to plan our roles. We were tense. If it didn’t work, Nellie might again jump into someone’s car window because she likes to ride in cars — anyone’s. We talked some more and reassured each other that this was for science. Then we were ready. I stood at the door and looked at Nellie. Then I opened the door. First she looked at me, thinking it was some sort of trick, like I’d slam the door closed if she got near it. But it was still open. In a split second she was gone, sprinting down the driveway. As Nellie ran down the road and Sully jogged behind, we had a small technical glitch — much like NASA, right? I forgot to turn on the tracking unit. Did I mention I don’t read directions? But fortunately, the Tagg anticipated my klutziness and turned on by itself. Then — let’s face it this is a miracle — it began tracking Nellie. She was running down the road out of sight … but she was the little paw icon on my phone: We knew where she was. This led to the aforementioned me running down the road staring at the screen on my phone. This was the coolest dog-tech thing I had ever seen. There were a few hiccups. For example, I had set the application to warn me when Nellie was out of the Home Zone. Thus I received 46 emails and 12 texts in the space of an hour about Nellie. The tracker seemed almost overly anxious, much like an aunt who used to baby-sit us and go crazy if we even tried to go outside. But again this was due to operator error. I reset the preferences, and now it’s more like one casual message: “Dude, Nellie’s gone.” My conclusion, shared by my experimental team, is this is great technology for people who care about their dogs and worry about them escaping. I can see a day in the near future where GPS tracking devices will be designed into collars. Like cellphones, we’ll wonder, how did we ever get along without a tracking device for our dogs?