Almost every dog carries a dog collar and about 90% have pet ID-tags attached. This is a good thing and has lead to much less animals being euthanized at shelters because the animal and the owner could be re-united. Statewide dog license laws are supposed to help return lost dogs to their owners, but they don’t work always because many dogs and cats might have lost their collars and ID-tags somewhere between where they escaped and the shelter they might end up at.

The AKC requests that owners of purebred show and breeding dogs comply with their rules of identification and have long since tattooed their animals for a permanent visible ID of their dogs. Tattoos have a drawback though, it is hard to find on longhaired and heavy-haired animals, and it can be hard to read, especially on a very frightened or aggressive animal. Not too many shelters take the time and effort to search for a tattoo.

The microchip, a tiny transponder the size of a grain of rice is by far the most effective tool to identify an animal and re-unite it with it’s owner. It also guarantees almost 100% that the animal is not euthanized in shelters before the owner is found. The microchip is implanted under the dog’s skin, around the neck/shoulder area and it’s ID number can be read by scanning the animal. It is implanted similar to an injection and not painful for the animal. The chip’s ID number is stored in a tiny transponder that emits low-frequency radio waves and picked up by an antenna in the transponder. The scanner retrieves the number, decodes and displays it. Every ID number is unique and stored at a regional or national database together with the owner’s address. Scanning the animal takes only seconds.

At the moment the only problem is that there are two different chips and scanners, working on two different frequencies, 125 kHz and 134 kHz. Two companies, Schering-Plough Animal Health and AVID, share the bulk of the business of pet identification by microchip. Shelters are mostly equipped with a universal scanner. AVID though had it’s chips encoded so it can’t be read by this universal scanner. The best shelters then can do is identify that a chip is implanted if it’s an (unreadable) AVID chip but will still need access to an AVID scanner to get access to the database.

Crazy situation, in our opinion, it’s “business” again, as always! Hopefully this will change in the near future! Animal welfare should be first and foremost, not making “big bucks” by selling non-compatible products! For now we recommend talking with your veterinarian and animal shelters in your area to see what scanners they use and decide upon the matching chip.

The costs for implanting a microchip are anywhere between $20 - $50. Some vet offices offer “Specials” to add the chip together with the last series of basic vaccinations. It is not recommended to implant these chips before your animal has received its final vaccinations.

Microchips can be used on cats and dogs. The chips will last a lifetime and very seldom get re-located under the animal’s skin.

Microchipped animals will not be accepted by Laboratories that use stray/unrecovered pets for experiments.