The Halo Collar: Helping Lost & Stolen Pets Through Innovation

Written by Chelsea Salerno, Copy Editot

It might be every dog parent’s worst nightmare: your dog slips out of your yard, jumps out of your car, takes off after a squirrel, or worse, snatched straight from your yard, never to be seen again. Sure, there are microchips and identification tags, but there’s always going to be an uncontrollable fear of your dog being lost in the unknown. Enter the Halo Collar, a dog smart-collar that combines technology and dog psychology to quell all anxiety of your dog ever going missing. It all began in 2017 when founder Ken Ehrman realized there was a need for a better dog safety system when his two young nieces lost their precious pup, Ruby. She had wandered out of the yard and been hit by a car, something that could have been prevented with better dog containment products. After some research, Ken decided to create his own completely new technology for a better, safer solution to keeping track and containing your dog by using his background and expertise in tracking and safety technology, Thus, the idea for the Halo Collar was born.

Ken and his brother Michael began developing the technological side of the collar but still needed some dog expertise to make this vision a reality. Ken brought in Cesar Milan, the greatest dog behavior guru in the world, and built a team that fused the brother’s advanced technical expertise with Cesar’s world-renowned dog psychology methods. Together, they founded Halo with their shared vision to create this unique combination of smart technology and Cesar’s “natural, simple, profound” approach to dog psychology. This has made Halo into what it is now: the world’s newest and most effective smart fence, smart training and smart collar system for dogs.

The Halo Collar was invented and the prototype tweaked over the course of multiple years and a variety of rounds of testing. The official prototype took approximately 3 years of development and testing before it was ready for market and went through many improvements and innovations. The final product has many features that keep your dog both safe and contained. The Smart Fence technology provides fully-closed virtual safe areas for your dog to safely roam off-leash inside the Halo Fence you create. Halo Fences are then stored directly in your dog’s Halo Collar and are fullyautomated via GPS and the Halo Collar’s internal logic. The Halo Fence boundaries communicate intuitively with perfectly timed Prevention Feedback that you can customize for you and your dogs needs. These fences can be created virtually anywhere in the world, the your Halo Collar will track your dog’s location accurately within 10 feet!

Halo takes a holistic approach to boundary training that’s more effective than any other. Cesar’s four-step program sets you and your dog up for success. Your Halo User Training is an all-access pass to Cesar’s dog behavioral psychology methods so you can learn what it takes to improve your relationship with your dog and fully utilize all the features of the collar. Once you have mastered this, you will learn Cesar’s methods to put your pup in a positive state of mind. Your third step is learning to activate your dog’s natural capacity to learn. Indoor Halo Beacons communicate instantly with your dog’s Halo Collar via Bluetooth, providing perfectly-timed guidance to teach your dog to keep away from off-limits areas and come back to safety. The custom prompts have 15 levels of volume and static, plus a wide variety of vibration types, sounds, and tones for every parenting style. Finally, practicing outdoor training using the same methods your dog has already mastered inside completes the four-step program. Halo Fences instantly communicate with your dogs Halo Collar and you will work with your dog’s natural instinct to master distractions and keep improving positive encouragement to come back to safety. Together, these steps will work towards eliminating your dog’s use to run out of the fence and keep them safe and sound!

It isn’t only lost pets and escape prevention that are helped by this technology. The 2020 coronavirus pandemic showed an increase in dog theft across the entire country. Due to the lockdown, people were spending more time at home and looking for companion animals. Unfortunately, this pushed the price of dogs and puppies up in general, which criminals capitalized on, resulting in a high rise in dog theft. The most famous recent example of this happened earlier this spring when two of Lady Gaga’s French Bulldogs were stolen and her dog walker shot. After Lady Gaga offered a $500,000 reward for the safe return of her pets, a woman claimed to have “found” the dogs and was subsequently taken into custody as a suspect. Upon further investigations, LAPD connected the woman to four other suspects who were also taken into custody. “Detectives do not believe the suspects were targeting the victim because of the dogs’ owner. However, evidence suggests the suspects knew the great value of the breed of dogs and was the motivation for the robbery,” an LAPD news release stated. French Bulldogs can cost up to $10,000 and are a highly coveted breed, but many other purebred dogs are also targets of dognappers, especially small ones that are easy to grab and conceal.

The American Humane Association estimates that 1 out of 3 pets become lost at some point in their lifetime and close to 10 million dogs and cats are lost or stolen in the US every single year and according to the Coalition for Reuniting Pets and Families, less than 23% of lost pets in the U.S. are reunited with their owners. Because pets are lawfully viewed as personal property nationwide, those who steal them have relatively little to lose. Pet thefts are mostly considered misdemeanors, and the punishment is similar to the consequences of stealing someone’s couch. It varies by state, but if the perpetrator has no prior criminal history, the penalty is typically a small fine and often little to no jail time. Smart collars such as the Halo Collar are the first step in preventing dogs from going missing or being stolen.

The Halo Collar alleviates the number of pets that go missing every year by keeping dogs contained to prevent them from going missing in the first place. Their technology has several failsafes in place, like guiding your dog back to safety using advanced internal logic, and tracking them if they somehow get lost or stolen. Most tracking collars only notify you once an emergency has already occurred but the Halo Collar can both track and autonomously guide them back to safety. Their mission statement is “no more lost dogs”, which sums up their overarching goal to keep dogs safe and ensure pet parents know the location of their dogs at all times. Additionally, the activity monitoring in this collar can show you if your dog is being transported in a car, which helps in the event of dog-napping. There may be an increase in dog-napping during these unsure times, but the creators of Halo Collar are doing everything they can to insure the safety of your pets.

To learn more about the Halo Collar or to purchase one for yourself, please visit www.halocollar.com for more information. There are 6, 12 and 24 month financing plans available as well as a 60 day trial period and year long warranty.■