Microchips can be a lost pets’ way home. Microchips are a small computer chip, about the size of a grain of rice, that a veterinarian inserts under the dog or cats’ skin in the shoulder blade area. It needs to be registered with the owners’ information, and kept updated if the owner moves or changes a phone number.
If Fluffy or Fifi gets lost, and is picked up and turned over to a shelter or taken to a veterinary clinic, they can use a microchip scanner to read the information on the chip, contact the owner, and there is a happy ending.
There are stories on the news about the stray cat or dog, turned into the shelter, and when the microchip is scanned, it registers to someone living several hundred miles away. How did it get so far from home? Did it hitch a ride on a truck? Was it kidnapped? Who knows.
Some stories online – A Jack Russell Terrier disappeared in Pennsylvania, and was found in Portland, Oregon. A dog found in a wildlife area near Sacramento, CA, had been missing for eight years and 2,600 miles away.
If you were missing your pet, would you think about advertising hundreds of miles away for your fur baby? Most people put up flyers around their block, or at the neighborhood market. You don’t think about putting the word out miles away. And without the microchip, these pets would never make it home.
And one doesn’t always think to advertise several miles from home. A rescue I volunteered with years ago received a call about a very sweet stray cat that had showed up. The person was elderly and afraid of tripping over the cat. We picked up the cat. She was microchipped, and her contact information led us to a home in a nearby town, about 12 miles away. The cat had been missing for over a year.
These microchips worked because they had accurate information. It is heartbreaking for a shelter or vet clinic to scan an animal, find a microchip, and then discover that the microchip was never activated, or that the information is no longer accurate. If you move, or if you get a different phone number or e-mail, be sure to update the microchip.
When a microchip has current information, a precious and loved fur baby gets back home to the family who loves it.
