Hey, you think "beeper collars" are great? Well, read on. I think you'll agree Ted Gartner and friends at Garmin are really on to something.

The new GPS Dog Tracking System gives you the ability to track the amount of ground covered by your gun dog.

They've developed a unit small enough to fit our dog's collar that continually updates a handheld GPS receiver to show us the dog's location...and it can also indicate when he's pointing birds.

Sound interesting? I thought it might, so in order to provide a little more information on the unit, we'll summarize a conversation I recently had with Ted Gartner, Garmin International's PR guy.

Bob West: Ted, it's no surprise you folks would be the ones to bring this concept of tracking our dog's movement, using Global Positioning, through to a finished product. I know a lot of hunters including myself have asked, "Why doesn't someone..." Anyway, when did you begin seriously looking at the idea of using GPS to track our dogs?

Ted Gartner: Well, Bob, we've been hearing from our customers for a long time about the need to develop a GPS tracking collar, but things started taking shape a few years ago around a campfire in the grouse woods of northern Minnesota. After a long day of banging through the woods, a buddy and I wondered how far our dogs had traveled. Being an avid bird hunter and a Garmin employee, I realized I was in a unique position to learn more about the movements of our dogs.

One of the features of the GPS system allows you to know where your dog is at all times.

The next morning, we strapped one of our Foretrex GPS receivers (a unit designed for hikers and runners) onto a couple of our dogs and we went hunting. We couldn't actively track our dogs, but that evening we were able to download their tracks to a PC to determine where they hunted and how much ground they covered. I immediately knew we were on to something.

Shortly after that experience, a team of talented engineers started to conceptualize the idea and soon realized we had the technology and expertise to make it a reality. It's been nearly three years in the making, but we think we've got something that can really be useful to gun dog owners.

BW: How does this unit work?

TG: It's pretty simple. We call the device that you strap onto your dog the DC 20. It's just a little bit larger than a standard e-collar box. In fact, when you're using an e-collar, you simply thread the tracking unit onto the existing collar so it sits up on the back of the dog's neck. Or if you prefer, you can mount the DC 20 on your dog's back using a harness we've designed to hold it upright.

The Astro GPS Dog Tracking System is ready to go out of the box. Once the unit acquires a GPS signal, it automatically lets you know where your dog is. Unlike telemetry collars, there's a compass page on the handheld unit that shows the direction and precise distance to your dog. It also indicates if your dog is running or on point, and unlike beeper collars, the unit runs silent...so there's no incessant noise.