Dog eats AirTag and becomes a walking tracker

(Image credit: John-Anthony Disotto)

What happens when your dog starts beeping from its stomach? A man found out the hard way when his Labrador retriever, Sassy, decided her Apple AirTag would make a nice lunch.

Colin Mortimer from Washington D.C lost track of his dog’s AirTag which he uses to track her location by attaching Apple’s Find My device to her collar. After searching under couches, his bed, and every other nook in his house, Mortimer turned to his iPhone.

Apple’s Find My app works effortlessly with AirTags and allows users to see the location of their little white tracking pucks. Mortimer could see via the app that the lost AirTag was still in his two-bedroom home. Using the built-in tracking feature which sounds an alert from the AirTag, Mortimer could hear his 50-pound puppy beep from her stomach.

“I was like ‘Oh my God,’ ” Mortimer told The Wall Street Journal “Luckily, we got her to throw it up.” Bite marks aside, the AirTag still works, although it’s maybe not advised to keep using it with Sassy.

AirTags for dinner.

Apple doesn’t advertise AirTags for pet tracking but many pet owners have seen the benefits of using such an easy-to-use and accessible feature with their dogs. Vets continue to warn owners against using the Find My devices on dog collars as swallowing an AirTag is not always just a vomit or poop away from extraction.

Vets warn that if the AirTag remains stuck long enough then the batteries can leak causing serious complications and damage to a dog’s internal organs.

Since its release, AirTags have become incredibly popular with Apple users and our list of the best accessories for AirTags show potential collars designed to prevent this sort of thing from happening if these reports haven't put you off from using the device as a pet-tracker. There have been multiple concerns since its launch including reports of stalking, although, Apple introduced a significant update for stalking protection in iOS 16.2.

AirTags are fantastic little devices but it’s clear that they’re maybe best on your luggage rather than as your dog’s lunch.

John-Anthony Disotto is the How To Editor of iMore, ensuring you can get the most from your Apple products and helping fix things when your technology isn’t behaving itself. Living in Scotland, where he worked for Apple as a technician focused on iOS and iPhone repairs at the Genius Bar, John-Anthony has used the Apple ecosystem for over a decade and prides himself in his ability to complete his Apple Watch activity rings. John-Anthony has previously worked in editorial for collectable TCG websites and graduated from The University of Strathclyde where he won the Scottish Student Journalism Award for Website of the Year as Editor-in-Chief of his university paper. He is also an avid film geek, having previously written film reviews and received the Edinburgh International Film Festival Student Critics award in 2019. John-Anthony also loves to tinker with other non-Apple technology and enjoys playing around with game emulation and Linux on his Steam Deck.

In his spare time, John-Anthony can be found watching any sport under the sun from football to darts, taking the term “Lego house” far too literally as he runs out of space to display any more plastic bricks, or chilling on the couch with his French Bulldog, Kermit.