Microchip Your Pet for Safety
You see the calls for help all of the time in the paper…
Tacked up on a telephone pole…
On the grocery store bulletin board...
Lost! Small gray spotted kitten in the vicinity of Fifth and Third…
Black Lab missing from Claret Park last Saturday, if you have info please contact…
What can a pet owner do to protect their companions?
One easy way to protect your pet is to make sure that they have a microchip identification implanted upon them.
The two major microchipping companies are HomeAgain and AVID.*
According to the HomeAgain website,
… one in three pets will become lost during their lifetime. And according to the American Humane Association, only about 17 percent of lost dogs and two percent of lost cats ever find their way back to their original owners. Almost 4 million pets are euthanized every year because their owners can't be found in time - if a shelter cannot determine a pet's owner, the pet may be euthanized in as few as three days.
Tags and collars are a good start - they're certainly better than no ID at all - but they aren't 100 percent dependable. Tags can fade, rust, or get scratched, making them impossible to read. Collars can tear or slip off, or get caught on something while your pet is wandering…To microchip your pet, a veterinarian injects a tiny chip about the size of a grain of rice just under your pet's skin between the shoulder blades. The number on the chip is then entered into the HomeAgain database.
When a lost pet is found, any animal hospital, shelter, or humane society can use a special handheld microchip scanner to read our microchip's unique ID number. The veterinarian or shelter then contacts the HomeAgain database. The database matches the number to a name and phone number, reuniting the lost pet with its owner.
The site states that the procedure to implant the microchip is not expensive, it is not a safety threat to your pet, enrolling in a database or service is not necessary, implanting the microchip will not hurt your pet, most shelters and veterinarians have microchip scanners, so they will be able to read the microchip and identify your pet, every pet with a microchip will be given a unique number and the microchip will not wear out or need to be replaced.
Tuesday we will look at the AVID process and then you will decide and proceed to protect your pet.
* In the interest of full disclosure,I must inform you that unfortunately I own no stock or other interests in either one of these ventures.
http://www.pettrustlawblog.com/admin/trackback/72501
