Re your “dog gone” project: As I mentioned in the link below, the “away” reaction of the iBeacon Tracker integration is pretty slow. It varies, but can be as long as 2-3 minutes. (I haven’t tested it for a while, so maybe it is better now). That’s kinda slow for something urgent like “hey, the dogs are running down the street!” If it was me, I would want a faster notification.
One option is to try to set up your system so that it triggers your automation when the beacon signal is less than -85, for example. In other words, instead of triggering when the signal is MISSING/“away” (which is slow in this integration), you could instead trigger when the beacon RSSI signal is less than (weaker than) -85. So any dog beacon rssi signal reading below -85, e.g. -87, -91, -94, would trigger the automation. This setup would work if the dog is gradually moving away, and the scanner has time to “see” weak rssi readings. But if the dog was running away, the scanner might see -83 and then one second later the dog might be out of range, so then the “less than -85” would not trigger. I suppose you could set up two automations, one based on the weak signal idea, and another as a backup that would trigger when the beacon was “away”/missing. So if the weak signal automation failed to trigger due to the dog running away fast, then at least the backup “away” automation would trigger a couple minutes later.
Another option: I am working on a new product which will be a beacon scanner/gateway specializing in fast scans and reactions. It won’t be ready though for another month or two. It will be sorta like ESPresence, but coded for fast reactions/automations. It will be limited to scanning for three beacons max. You can place it far away from your HA, as long as the HA and the gateway are on the same wifi network. The bad news for you is that it will be limited to using Blue Charm branded beacons only.
Re bluetooth adaptor: I’m not using any adaptor or proxy. My rPi has built-in BLE scanning ability. Take a look at this link for all the details: