FindMy app open but not connecting to the AirTag

It's even nuttier if two people are tracking the device. We have an AirTag on the dog's collar. She slipped the collar somewhere in the neighborhood. On my phone, it says that the device is at our house, with my wife, last seen Jan 1. On my wife's phone, it says that the device is out on the path with me, where I was walking the dog, before she slipped the collar, on Jan 2. If she enables "Notify When Found", it immediately sends a notification with the Jan 2 date/time, and turns off the notification. Seems odd. I would expect it to wait until it was found at some time after it was lost. If it tells you where it was before you lost it, then turns off notifications, the notification feature is worthless.

A vehicle of mine has a air tag in it and when I go into “my find” and look for the item it just says “last seen 3 days ago and the next day 4 days ago” and then etc etc as the days go on, the vehicle is in a different location to where I live and I would like to check it is still there…what does seen 3 or 4 days ago mean !?

It could be a number of factors, that include:

• Its location was picked up by an iPhone that did not accurately rely it to the Apple servers.
• Its Bluetooth signal was interfered with at the point of transmission.
• The AirTag is defective/faulty.
• The AirTag's firmware required updating to make sure "precision finding" is available ... and that you have an iPhone 11 thru 14 model to use it.
• The person, who found the cat/AirTag, could disable the tag by removing its battery. Not a likely scenario, but could happen.
• The AirTag somehow got separated from your cat. Some pets may react negatively if they hear a sound, and try to remove their collar ... or the collar just got loose and fell off.

..it would be great that the alert would stay active, and only send a notification when its found. That is what I think is broken.

a few days ago, I placed my airtag on a friends bag with him aware of it. He has his bluetooth and Find My app active. He did get notified that an Airtag is tracking him several times, and he even said his app shows a trail in the map since it was detected with him. But me, nothing. Even after turning on lost mode, It just shows when and where we last met 2 days ago.

It's important to understand that an Apple AirTag relies on Bluetooth, not GPS. As such, it will require another iPhone to be within 30-40' of it to be able to send its location information. That iPhone would also have to have both "Find My Network" and Bluetooth enabled ... as well as, have either a cellular or wireless connection to the Internet to rely that info to the Apple servers ... where you would then see it in the Find My app.

The AirTag's signal performs more like a beacon, so having it transmit and having an iPhone nearby will be critical to get updated location information to Find My. This is not always possible. When there are no updates, you will just see the last known location.

The bottom line is that Apple did not design the AirTag for tracking ... either pets or people. Now you should see one reason why they are not effective. If your goal is to track your pet's location, then you should consider getting a dedicated tracking device, that relies on GPS.