Microchips And Why Your Pet Should Have One
About three decades ago, I had a little dog named Franny. I put her in the backyard one day, and didn’t notice that someone had opened my back gate. Franny slipped out and went wandering.
She was not wearing an identification tag (a BIG mistake!), so it was just about miraculous that I got her back. A woman found her, called the Maryland SPCA and described the dog she found. When I called there the next morning, they connected me with her and Franny came home to me.
Back then, an ID tag was the only tool available to help reunite lost pets with their owners. Today, there’s an amazing second line of defense, a microchip.
Pet microchips are small electronic chips, about the size of a grain of rice. A needle injects it into your pet between its shoulder blades. It’s comparable to a regular vaccine injection.
The pet owner registers the microchip online. Should the pet become lost, animal shelters or veterinary hospitals can locate the chip with a hand-held scanner. The information they find there will reconnect the pet with its owner.
According to the Petfinder website, one in three animals will become lost at some point in their lives, and microchips make a huge difference in the chance that they will be reconnected with their owners.
A study of 53 animal shelters published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association concluded that only about 22 percent of lost dogs in shelters were reunited with their families. But the return-to-owner rate for microchipped dogs was over 52 percent.
For cats, a 2 percent return rate jumped to 38 percent for those with microchips.
That doesn’t mean your pet shouldn’t also have a collar with a tag that shows your name, phone number and address.
But collars can fall off or be caught on something and break.
A microchip is there for good, and every pet should have one.
Most animals adopted from shelters and rescues have them. If your pet doesn’t have one, contact your veterinarian.
If you live in Baltimore County, the Baltimore County Animal Shelter in Baldwin offers free microchipping for any pet brought in for a rabies vaccine and also provides microchips whenever a citizen has their animal spayed or neutered by the county. The cost of the surgery and microchip is just $20!
If you want to know whether a microchip is really worth it, just ask Angela Staats. Her cat, Raven, went missing in August 2015. A month later, someone found Raven’s broken collar and returned it to her. She assumed she would never see Raven again.
Fast forward to well over a year later in November 2016. Raven landed in the Baltimore County Animal Shelter, and her microchip led to a happy reunion with Angela and her family.
Watch this video to hear her happy story!
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