A surefire way to better connect with your pet

I’m one of those pet parents. My dog — a two-year-old lab-boxer-pit mix with a heart of gold named Stevie — is very important to me, and I’m pretty sure that I annoy her with how often I’m up in her business. I’m always trying to play, snuggle, give scratches, and marvel at her cuteness. (I’ve put a sweater on her once, and only once). That all may sound like paradise for a dog, but I swear she gives me side-eye when I get too clingy.

All of this is to say that I find it vital to constantly know and how she’s doing. I’m a protective dog dad, and that regularly leads to irrational worries about her daily existence. If what I’ve just told you describes your pet parenting habits as well, then I couldn’t recommend the Whistle GO Explore GPS and health tracker more.

The device at a glance

In its simplest terms, the Whistle GO Explore is a FitBit for both dogs and cats.

Looking at the description for the device (on the box or on the of their website), Whistle claims that the GO Explore is the “ultimate” health and location tracker for pets, with the ability to accurately track your companion in real-time, as well as monitor its daily health.

It’s said to be highly durable and almost completely waterproof, with a long-lasting battery that can supposedly work for up to 20 days on a full charge. It also boasts other quality of life features like a night light, food calculator, and tele-vet access.

Is the Whistle GO Explore too good to be true, though? I wanted to find out, so I put one on Stevie’s collar for a month to see if it could deliver.

Does it make good on its claims?

For the most part, it absolutely does, and I walked away really impressed with the amount of information that the tracker was able to keep me looped into.

The big picture stuff like location and health tracking worked remarkably well, with the latter of the two being more helpful than I initially thought it would be. At the end of every week, the Whistle app (which is super intuitive, simple to set up, and easy to navigate) sent me a weekly wellness report, which contained detailed information about Stevie’s average activity minutes, distance traveled, calories burned, and hours of rest.

Image: dylan haas / mashable

The device was also able to give me insights into how often she was scratching and licking, which is a really important data point to have for your pet’s skin health (Stevie has very sensitive, dry skin). Using this trend data in conjunction with some preliminary information that you input yourself (age, weight, breed), the app is able to calculate things like recommended daily food intake and fitness goals. I was floored by how much more connected I felt with Stevie and her overall health at the end of each week. I also thought it was cool that you could have these reports compiled and sent to your vet right through the app in the event that you notice anything concerning, but I never ended up needing to use it (thankfully, my dog is in good health).

The location tracking was also surprisingly accurate, and the “real-time” buzzword actually ended up not being an empty promise. One thing I really appreciated was the ability to draw out multiple safe zones within the app’s GPS map of your local area — basically, you make a customizable box around the sections your pet often goes, and when the tracker detects that they have left one of those areas, you’re sent a notification and approximate address. I didn’t feel like I absolutely needed this feature, but it’s a good insurance policy just in case of an emergency. There was a slight bit of lag time between when I would leave a safe zone with my dog and when I would get the notification, but that’s the only issue I had with that feature over the past month (the address it gave was always pretty precise). Other notifications like battery updates and milestones that Stevie completed popped on my phone with no issues.

I’m convinced that if Stevie ever got lost, I would be able to find her.

Although it was imperfect, I also liked that the tracker kept a record of where Stevie and I went during walks (reminiscent of the ) — the only problem is that, in order to save battery, the tracker only checks in every six minutes or so, which muddied the accuracy of those records a bit (you can change that refresh rate, but I didn’t really want to sacrifice the battery life). The location services also provide daily and weekly location breakdowns of your pet’s most visited places. 

I thankfully never had to implement the device’s lost pet mode in a real situation, but I did test it out just to see what it could do. When you activate the mode, the Whistle switches from those six-minute check-ins to 15-second check-ins so you can get a more accurate reading on your pet’s location, enabling real real-time tracking. It also shows where you’re located on the map, as well as any other humans you’ve invited to your profile. Hopefully I would never need to use the lost pet mode, but I’m convinced that if Stevie ever got lost, I would be able to find her.

Besides tracking abilities, the Whistle GO Explore also has some other helpful functions built into it, one of them being a night light. Easily controlled through the companion app, you can set the device’s small but powerful light to a slow flash, fast flash, or an always-on mode. The dog park near my apartment isn’t lit at night, so I used this feature often on our nightly walks, and never lost sight of her.

I was also impressed by the longevity of the tracker, both in terms of durability and battery life. Even after hitting the sidewalk multiple times because of the faulty snap attachment (which I’ll get to in a bit), the Whistle only showed a few small scratches, and performance went unaffected. And that 20-day battery life claim was no joke — my first charge lasted even longer than that. I can also confirm that it is definitely waterproof after weathering a few nasty rainstorms.

Image: dylan haas / mashable

Where things can improve

Even though I’ve spent a long time praising it, the Whistle GO Explore isn’t perfect. Besides what I already mentioned about notification lag time, I also had issues with the device’s snap collar attachment. With the Whistle being as bulky and heavy as it is, the tracker constantly fell off of Stevie’s collar, even when she wasn’t engaging in any sort of physical activity. The velcro loop attachment fixed the issue, but some will find it annoying that the snap version is pretty much useless if you don’t have a perfectly sized collar from the jump.

The subscription service that you’re forced to join for the Whistle GO Explore to work just didn’t seem fair to me. The tracker itself is already $129.95, so to tack on a monthly fee of $9.95 ($7.95 per month for an annual plan, and $6.95 per month for a two-year plan) seems excessive. This puts the Whistle tracker in luxury item territory for me, though others probably won’t have any issue.

Final thoughts

The Whistle GO Explore is one of the most comprehensive and feature-packed pet trackers I have come across. It provided me with invaluable data and insights that I didn’t even know I wanted to have, and genuinely made me feel more deeply connected with Stevie. A lot of those daily worries about her health and the possibility of losing her have also lessened thanks to the device’s presence.

Is it essential that you get one? Maybe not, but it’s definitely a luxury worth having for concerned pet parents like me. The true value in the Whistle GO Explore is that if your pet did happen to get lost, you would have the tools you need to find them. The price of admission and subscription fee isn’t easy for everyone to accept, but if an emergency were to happen, it’s probably the last thing you’d be thinking about. So, from one protective pet parent to another, I’d say give the Whistle GO Explore a go.