A significant portion of pet owners (dogs and cats) place Apple AirTags on the collars of their pets. We did the same with our own, alas late, dog. The passive GPS can provide comfort on geographic location if pet becomes lost.
Given multiple experiences, we encourage relevant pet parents understand the anti-stalking function. Pet Parents may not be aware of function as it may not be evident in their everyday use, as AirTag is associated with the Apple account of Pet Parent.
In a nutshell, if the AirTag self-determines that has been in close proximity to an Apple device that is not in the Apple ‘family’ of the AirTag owner then it periodically emits a loud beep. This is intended to notify someone that they be being geographically tracked, perhaps without their permission.
For pets, after a couple of housesit days, this means that the AirTag on their collar emits a loud bleep sound whenever the housesitter approaches them to start a walk. In our experience, the beep sound causes stress to the pet and probably creates a negative association between the pet and housesitter.
In some housesits, the pet parent has temporarily added us to their Apple family. In some housesits, we’ve agreed with Pet Parent to simply remove their AirTag from the pet collar and replace with our our own AirTag (we carry them in luggage).
No right answer here. But Pet Parents should be aware of the AirTag function and likely impact on housesitters.
thanks for bringing this to my attention. I went deep diving on this because my dog has been wearing an apple tag on her collar obviously visible for probably five years. I’ve never had anyone tell me anything in the last year so after a quick conversation with ChatGPT, here is what I learned. I hope this helps Somebody else too, as I did not know any of this. Also, it made me realize I was the only one with access to the info, and I have now Shared the device with my husband. We use these on our mountain bikes as well. In case they ever go missing. Handy little things! But I definitely can see how they can be exploited.
The honest takeaway:
If you’ve had 5 sitters and zero complaints, this is not currently a real problem for you.
What I’d do (practical, no drama):
Do nothing unless:
A sitter mentions it
Or your dog seems bothered by a random chirp
If it ever comes up:
→ Then just share the AirTag with that sitter and you’re done
Bottom line:
You’re not missing something obvious. If it were happening frequently or loudly, someone would’ve said something by now.
There’s an easy workaround for this problem. If you have an old iPhone, you can simply connect it to WiFi, sign into your Apple account and leave the phone plugged into a charger in the house while you’re away. End of beeping
Describing how the antistalking feature works is useful until Apple changes the antistalking feature. Apple has changed it fairly regularly over the past few years.
@MTBer, thanks for the practical insight. Kudos on sharing Airtags with spouse (we do that). And sharing AirTag temporarily with housesitter is easy too, and easy to remove after housesit completed.
We’ve come across this topic multiple times. For us, we have observed clear anxiety to the dog and sometimes a reluctance of the dog to commence walks … as that’s when loud (close to their ears) beeping noise commences. That a dog becomes anxious or scared when housesitter approaches to commence a walk seems a bad, avoidable outcome.
As you note, some Pet Parents may well not face challenges
to our knowledge, Apple Airtag anti-stalking device activates only after 2-3 days, so not issue on short housesits
the function triggers to a specific iphone, so if housesitter couple take turns walking the dog then anti-stalking may not trigger
given phone-based trigger, the feature will probably not trigger on dogs walked off lead/leash
this is an Apple function, so if houseitter does not use reasonably current Apple phone then it will not trigger