As you know, I am not just the founder of Halo, but I use Halo every day to keep my dog Reese’s safe and off leash. A little about how Halo got started:
In 2017, I lived through the tragedy of losing a dog first-hand when my young nieces’ dog, Ruby, ventured out of the yard – through a traditional underground-wire fence – and was killed by a passing car. At that moment, I knew I had the experience and capabilities to prevent it from happening again. After doing research on the problem, I was astounded that despite all the training, fencing, and technology that exists today, that millions of dogs were still lost, hurt or killed each year.
For 30 years, I had pioneered safety and tracking technology in the Internet of Things (IoT) industry with my brother, Michael. Together, they developed technological advancements in the safety and tracking industry that are trusted by some of the world’s most demanding companies—and have saved countless lives in the transportation industry. So, we decided to apply our experience and relationships to use the latest and greatest developments in IoT to create a solution that would give his nieces—and pet parents everywhere—the ultimate safety and peace of mind.
In March 2018, I sought out the world’s most renowned dog expert to make Halo a reality. Cesar Millan, known world-wide as the Dog Whisperer and the greatest dog psychology guru in the world, knew immediately this was a problem he needed to help solve. When Cesar heard about Halo, his dream was to help create this amazing tool—the Halo Collar—that can communicate with a dog using their instincts. He knew that it was essential to provide a program that would teach people how to train their own dogs to recognize boundaries, because practicing safety starts with the human who teaches it.
Technology and nature don’t always combine seamlessly, so developing Halo required entirely new ways of thinking about how the technology can work for the dog—not the other way around. This meant rethinking the collar’s design, the way the collar responds to a dog’s movement, and how the collar’s feedback was going to be used to create clear and consistent guidance for a dog.
Together, we created Halo – the most advanced GPS-tracking enabled collar and a wireless fence in one — a unique combination of smart technology, and Cesar’s “natural, simple, profound” approach to dog psychology. After more than three years of development, Halo is now protecting nearly 45,000 dogs across the United States.
Today, we launched the New and Improved Halo 2 collar. We have been collecting feedback and Halo Collar reviews from our pack leaders for more than a year. We have heard them ask for a more rugged collar, with better protection from rough environments – and other dogs. With our new and included Pro-case, Halo can now withstand dog bites, loose branches, swimming in the ocean, and more. ALL of the reasons our customers either returned or had broken Halo 1’s are addressed with Halo 2, including better cellular, location accuracy, wifi, Bluetooth, and battery performance. This unyielding commitment make the new Halo 2 collar into what it is now: the world’s most effective smart fence, smart training and smart collar system for dogs.
In addition, at the same time we are launching adjustable indoor beacons or “keep away” zones. Now you can place beacons anywhere in your house to keep your dog away…expensive couches, new rugs, even bassinettes – are now safe with Halo Beacons.
We also have launched world class customer service. Welcome to the Dog Park – a virtual dog park to connect with experts and other Halo users. With the Dog Park, you can instantly enter a zoom conference with any of our trained technology and dog experts. Michael and I also conduct weekly Zoom orientations for all our new customers to get them going on their Halo journey as quickly as possible.
Halo has an extensive research and development and marketing road map that will carry us for the next two years and beyond. But what sets Halo apart is what we’ve accomplished thus far over the last three and a half years. In order to create a world class product, we needed to synthesize many best-in-class technologies. The collar includes the best GPS chip, antennas, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular chips, highly secure data and communications infrastructure, sensors, waterproof speakers, and environment-/dog-proof enclosure design – and a new case. Our app and infrastructure were developed with ease-of-use, security, scalability and cross-platform and internationalization in mind from the very beginning. But the technology is only part of the Halo story. Just as critical were creating a revolutionary method of owner and dog self-training built right into the app, making dog containment prompts more instinctive for the dog and owner, and bringing expert behavioral trainers into our Halo users’ homes. All of these critical, best-in-class elements had to come together to create the Halo Collar solution.
And when it all works seamlessly together, it’s like a world class symphony orchestra.
While we ship and support thousands of collars a week, we also release new versions of the app every two weeks containing features that our customers request. In addition, we release and seamlessly upgrade the Halo collar firmware every month to improve performance and battery life. We also collaborate closely with our power users and community to feed our roadmap so that we can continually re-prioritize.
Going forward, we will make the collar smaller, better, and faster, while simultaneously developing versions that will work worldwide (all dogs speak the same language). That said, we will never compromise our standards in all aspects of Halo. With Halo Care, your investment is protected for the future.
Halo’s mission from day one was to bring a pet technology to market unlike anything the world has ever seen – and to make it easy to use and as accessible as possible. We were also very lucky that we began our efforts three years ago – with all of the advancements in technology from the last 30 years available as a foundation.
Together, the Halo team committed to seeing our vision for a safer life off leash for all dogs become a reality.
Sincerely,
Ken Ehrman
