What are the limitations of AirTags for pet tracking?

I am very sorry for your loss. AirTags are not ideal for tracking pets since it relies on nearby Apple devices to privately send location data using Bluetooth. If there are no nearby devices, AirTag cannot communicate its location to the Find My network. As for location alerts such as from Notify When Left Behind, those alerts only work if your device itself moves away from an AirTag's location, not the other way around.

Hello~ Apple has never recommended AirTags to track pets as it works with Bluetooth. It isn’t a GPS tracker. Once the AirTag was in a static location and near another device it was able to be tracked. I, too am sorry for your loss but should you get another pet do some research and chose a proper GPS tracking device. Take care.

~Katana-San~

AirTag tracking depends on the AirTag coming very close to other Apple devices.

"Your AirTag sends out a secure Bluetooth signal that can be detected by nearby devices in the Find My network."

AirTag - Apple

Bluetooth is a short-range technology originally developed for personal area network uses, like connecting wireless headphones on your head to a phone carried elsewhere on your person. Or wirelessly connecting keyboards / mice to computers in the same room.

As long as your dog was home, she was probably close to a computer, tablet, or phone – but once she got out, and ran loose, there is no guarantee that she would choose to stay close to other people with iPhones – iPhones which could have helped to relay her location.

To directly answer the title of your post, the AirTag's limitations for pet tracking are:

• Without GPS technology, there would be NO realtime tracking ability.
• Location updates would be dependent on other iPhones within Bluetooth range of the tag, AND those phones would need an active Internet connection.
• The tag's random or deliberate introduced "beeping" could prove annoying to a pet ... especially if that animal was prior trained using a training collar.
• There is a potential for a pet to ingest the tag should they be successfully in removing it.

I am sorry for you loosing your dog. The air tag technology seems sometimes difficult to understand. In principle for it to work you need an i phone nearby with activated blue tooth and active cell phone connection. For moving targets like dogs and people in the outdoors that will not be very reliable. To give an example, I lost my wallet at a golf tournament with thousands of people around. For a while my i phone located the wallet at the last place I had it and it took a while to find a bluetooth connection which stayed in range long enough to register. I finally could follow my wallet to the lost and found. It worked but I had to cancel my credit cards before I got my wallet back. This said, where the air tag shines is at home when you mislay your keys or wallets and with your luggage at airports. In both cases, blue tooth has time to connect. If for example you try to find your car on an airport parking lot you will not get a real time reading but the last connection when someone walked by - and this was probably yourself when you left. For tracking children the only reliable way would be to get a basic i phone with basic service. The air tack is a valuable technology if one respect its limitations.

Even if a pet was wearing an active tracking device with GPS circuitry, that tracking device would need some way to communicate its location. Preferably something with a bit more range than Bluetooth.

GPS is one-way, from the satellites which broadcast radio signals, to receivers on the ground. The receivers can use GPS signals to triangulate approximately where they are, but there are no signals going from the receivers to the satellites. All the GPS signals are is a sort of map, which, if read properly, says, "You are here."