Getting "left the zone / arrived at the zone" over and over while your pet is fast asleep on the sofa? Don't worry — this is almost always GPS drift near a boundary, and making one change usually settles it for good.
Why this happens
Every location fix has a margin of error. If your pet is resting close to the edge of a fence, successive fixes can land just inside and just outside the circle, which reads as real crossings.
What Ask A Vet already does for you
Before you change anything, know that several protections are already in place:
| Protection | How it works |
|---|---|
| Exit buffer | Your pet must be more than the fence radius plus 30 m away before an exit counts. |
| Repeat cooldown | The same crossing within 60 seconds won't notify twice. |
| Accuracy filter | Fixes with accuracy worse than 100 m, and rough mobile-network fixes with no known accuracy, are ignored for zone detection entirely. |
| Drift filter in Location history | A completed visit shorter than 2 minutes is hidden as drift rather than shown as a real stay. |
The fix: make the zone bigger
Aim to leave a comfortable margin between where your pet usually rests and the edge of the circle.
- Open your pet's profile → GPS tracker settings → Virtual fence.
- Tap the zone.
- Increase the radius with the slider — up to 10 km.
- Tap Save.
Tip: the minimum is 100 m, which is also roughly the accuracy limit Ask A Vet will act on. A 100 m fence around a house has very little margin; a few hundred metres gives drift somewhere to go.
Check the zone is where you think it is
Open the zone and look at the map. If the pin was dropped on a search result rather than the exact spot, the circle may be offset by enough to clip your garden. Drag the pin to the right place, confirm the address, and save.
If your zones overlap
Each zone is watched separately, so a pet standing where two zones overlap can generate an event for each one. If that's noisier than you want, resize the zones so they don't overlap, or delete the one you don't need.
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