GPS Trackers for Beagle and Basset Hound

A Beagle and a Basset Hound — you've essentially got two professional nose-on-legs, and once either of them locks onto a scent trail, recall goes out the window. GPS trackers are genuinely useful in this situation, but they do need a mobile subscription to work and perform best where you have decent network coverage. To point you in the right direction: are both dogs off-lead in open countryside, do they escape from a garden, or a bit of both? And are they already microchipped?

That's a classic scent hound scenario — they find one weak point and they're gone before you notice. For two dogs with that kind of escape profile, I'd recommend the Tractive GPS DOG 4 for both of them. It's lightweight enough for a Basset's neck (which can be surprisingly thick), it has a solid live-tracking mode so you can watch them move in real time on your phone, and it does safe zone alerts — so the moment either dog crosses the boundary you've set around your garden, you get a notification. One subscription covers one tracker, so you'd need two subscriptions, but the trackers themselves aren't expensive. Before I go further — how big are your dogs roughly, and are they wearing standard collars or harnesses?

Both will be absolutely fine with the Tractive GPS DOG 4 — it clips onto a standard collar and the unit itself is small and light (around 35g), so it won't bother either dog. The Basset's neck size is no issue at all. The safe zone geofence is the feature you'll use most: set the boundary around your garden, and if your Beagle squeezes through the fence again you'll get an alert within seconds rather than ten minutes later when you notice the garden is quiet. One thing to know: Tractive runs on a subscription model — currently around £3–5 a month per tracker depending on the plan. For two dogs that's a small price for the peace of mind given your escape history. I'd get two identical units so you're only dealing with one app interface.

Battery life is the honest trade-off with GPS trackers. In standard mode the Tractive DOG 4 gets around 5–7 days, which is genuinely practical — you charge it once a week and forget about it. If you switch on live tracking or power-saving mode it shifts in both directions. The key habit is charging both trackers on the same day each week so you're never caught out. Given your dogs are mostly in the garden rather than roaming for hours, you won't be hammering the battery with constant live tracking, which helps a lot.

Good call — two Tractive GPS DOG 4 units, one per dog, safe zone alerts set up around the garden perimeter, and you'll catch the next escape attempt before they've made it to the end of the street. Make sure you attach them securely to the collar with the clip facing inward so there's nothing for a fence gap to snag on. The subscription activates in the app once the tracker is registered. Good luck with the fence reinforcements too.