Your pet left the garden and your phone stayed silent? Don't worry — this is usually easy to fix, and it's almost always one of a handful of things. Work through the checks below in order.
Jump to:
- Check the zone
- Check the tracker and the location
- Check who gets alerts
- If it still doesn't work
Check the zone
Is the zone switched on?
Open your pet's profile → GPS tracker settings → Virtual fence, tap the zone, and check the Activate safe zone / Activate no-go zone toggle. A zone that's switched off doesn't send alerts and isn't drawn on the map.
Did the zone actually reach the collar?
Look at the badge under the zone's name in the list:
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Syncing… | Still on its way to the tracker. |
| Not on collar (in red) | It never got there. Tap the badge itself to retry (tapping elsewhere on the row opens the zone for editing). |
| No badge | The tracker has confirmed it. |
Is the fence big enough?
Fences must be at least 100 m in radius — the slider won't go below that. A fence at the 100 m minimum has very little room for normal GPS drift, so if crossings are being missed or look wrong, try a larger radius.
Check the tracker and the location
Is the tracker reachable?
If the Virtual fence row in tracker settings is dimmed and shows "Tracker is unreachable — get in Bluetooth range or wait for mobile network", your tracker currently has neither a mobile connection nor a Bluetooth link to your phone. Zones can't be changed or synced until it's back.
Is your pet's location accurate enough right now?
While the tracker only has a rough mobile-network fix, Ask A Vet deliberately won't decide that a boundary was crossed — a coarse position could easily be wrong by more than the fence itself. Alerts resume once a proper fix comes through.
Is your pet inside a power-saving zone?
Inside a power-saving zone the tracker switches GPS off on purpose to save battery, so a crossing may not be picked up until your pet leaves that zone. If a power-saving zone overlaps the area you're fencing, that's the likely cause.
Check who gets alerts
Should this person be receiving alerts at all?
Zone alerts go to you, your pet's owner, and family members who have permission to track your pet's location. A family member without that permission can see zones but won't be alerted.
Check your phone's notification settings
Zone alerts are ordinary push notifications, so if notifications from the Ask A Vet app are blocked, muted, or in a focus/do-not-disturb mode on your phone, they won't appear.
Please note: there's no in-app switch for turning individual alert types on or off — zone alerts are controlled by your phone's notification settings for Ask A Vet.
If it still doesn't work
If the zone is active, shows no sync badge, and your tracker is online and reporting a good location, contact support with your pet's name, the zone name and roughly when the crossing happened. [CONFIRM: support contact channel to list here.]
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