Best feeder after WiFi failure for Border Collie

A WiFi dropout that stopped your feeder for 36 hours is a serious failure — that's not a minor glitch, that's your dog going without food for a day and a half because of a connectivity dependency that should never exist in a feeder's core function. You're right to be done with app-reliant feeders. Before I point you toward something better, tell me a bit more: how big is your Border Collie, roughly how many meals a day are you scheduling, and is the main concern travel, a long work schedule, or both?

That makes complete sense, and honestly for a dog like yours the remote check-in is a nice-to-have — reliable dispensing is non-negotiable. A 22kg active working-type Border Collie on two meals a day needs accurate, consistent portions every time, not a feeder that's one router reboot away from skipping a meal. What dry food are you using, and what size kibble? Some feeders handle large kibble much better than others, and I want to make sure whatever I suggest won't jam on her food.

Yes, jamming on medium kibble is a red flag — that points to a cheap auger mechanism that can't handle anything with irregular shapes or slight oil coating, which most quality kibbles have. Orijen in particular has a decent fat content so it can clump slightly in a poorly designed hopper. Here's my recommendation: the <strong>AmazonBasics Automatic Pet Feeder with Timer</strong> is fine for some situations, but for a dog your size with this history I'd go with the <strong>PetSafe Healthy Pet Simply Feed Automatic Feeder</strong>. It runs entirely on a programmed timer — no WiFi, no app, no cloud dependency whatsoever. It uses a slow-feed conveyor dispensing system rather than an auger, which handles medium and large kibble cleanly without jamming. You set two daily meals, dial in the portion size accurately in quarter-cup increments, and it dispenses whether your router is on or not. It's also genuinely easy to disassemble and clean, which matters because any feeder that's hard to clean becomes a bacteria problem within weeks. For a 22kg active dog on Orijen you're probably looking at around 300–350g per day total — the PetSafe handles that comfortably and holds enough for several days.

It's genuinely one of the better ones for accuracy. The conveyor belt mechanism means it moves a measured amount of food rather than relying on gravity or a spinning auger, both of which are prone to variation depending on how full the hopper is or how the kibble is sitting. You'll still want to weigh a few dispensed meals when you first set it up — this is true of any feeder — to confirm your dial setting matches your actual target weight, since quarter-cup increments don't perfectly translate to grams for every kibble shape. But once you've calibrated it, it stays consistent. Given what happened with your last one, the complete absence of any WiFi or app dependency will probably feel like a significant relief.

Good luck with it. The PetSafe Healthy Pet Simply Feed is available on Amazon UK — search that exact name and check you're getting the genuine PetSafe-branded unit rather than unbranded lookalikes. Set aside ten minutes when it arrives to weigh two or three test portions before you rely on it, and you'll have a good baseline. Your Border Collie will thank you for the reliability.