GPS tracker for scent-driven Basset Hound

A Basset Hound that disappears the moment a scent hits — that's one of the classic GPS tracker use cases, and your vet is right to flag it. Bassets are single-minded once their nose takes over, and at nine years old that instinct isn't going anywhere. GPS trackers are genuinely useful here, but they do need a monthly subscription and rely on mobile network coverage, so they work best where signal is decent. To point you to the right device: are you mostly walking in rural countryside or more suburban areas, and does your dog already have a microchip?

Twenty minutes of Humphrey following a pheasant through woodland — I can picture it. The microchip is good as a baseline, but it only helps once someone finds him and gets him to a scanner. For real-time countryside tracking you need something robust. A couple of questions: does Humphrey wear a harness or a collar on walks, and roughly how heavy is he? Bassets vary quite a bit and the tracker needs to sit comfortably without bouncing around.

At 28kg the weight of a tracker isn't an issue at all, and fast live updates on a collar is exactly the right priority for a scent-following dog in open countryside. My recommendation is the Tractive GPS DOG 4. It does 2-3 second live tracking updates when you activate the live mode — which is what you actually need when you're jogging through a field trying to catch Humphrey. It's waterproof, the battery lasts 2-5 days depending on use, and it clips neatly onto a collar. The subscription runs around £3-5 a month depending on the plan you choose. In woodland and fields the coverage depends on your local mobile network — Tractive uses all available networks rather than locking to one, which gives it the best chance in rural areas. It's the tracker I'd buy for this exact situation.

Yes, genuinely easy. The Tractive app has one big button that says Live — you tap it and a map updates with Humphrey's position every few seconds. You can see the direction he's heading and roughly how far away he is. Most people get the hang of it in five minutes. The normal mode, when you're not in live tracking, pings his location every few minutes and records a full route history, so you can also see exactly where he went on each walk. For a nine-year-old Basset with a determined nose, that combination of live chase mode and route history is exactly what makes this tracker worth the subscription.

The Tractive GPS DOG 4 comes with a collar attachment clip so nothing extra is needed for a standard collar — Humphrey's existing collar will work fine. You just download the free Tractive app, activate the device, and choose a subscription plan at checkout. The tracker itself is the one-off purchase; the subscription is separate and billed monthly or annually. That's genuinely everything you need. Worth checking Amazon UK for current pricing — it's often around £40-50 for the device itself.