Why Microchips Aren’t the Answer We Wished They Were
We all regularly see these amazing reunions between owner and pet thanks to microchips. Dogs and cats that have been separated from their families for weeks or months or perhaps years that are reunited. And then we sing the praises of the little piece of technology called the microchip. I think they are great and in theory are an amazing tool. But in reality they don’t work as well as the amazing reunions lead us to believe. You don’t see the countless found animals that are scanned and their Microchips don’t show they are there. The dogs that are adopted into homes after visiting the vet or local shelter to see if the dog that was picked up on the side of the road belongs to someone. Microchips as they stand now are extremely flawed and this hinders rather then helps their ability to reunite you with a missing or stolen pet.
To put it bluntly a collar and tag with your contact information is still they only sure way people will know who the animal belongs to.
1. Not all microchips operate on the same frequency. That means the scanner your vet has or that is in use at the local shelter might not be capable of reading your pets microchip. Which means you will not be reunited because they have no way of identifying you.
2. Chips shift around and there is no one specific place to insert them. Yes they are generally in the front portion of the animal but some are inserted in the center, on the left side or right side. If a quick scan is done it could easily miss the chip which means your pet will not be identified.
3. There are multiple chips manufactured and used around the country and even those from the same company can have different numbering systems so there is no one database for a vet to contact or a shelter to call in order to reunite owner with pet.
4. If your pet came to you with a Microchip but your vet couldn’t read it and so you opted to have a new one inserted your pet now has two microchips both which might be functioning perfectly. Thinking there was a problem with the first chip you didn’t know that because the scanner couldn’t read the original chip it just didn’t even recognize it as there being a chip at all. Now you go to register the new chip only to find out you can only register one chip and the company says you should register the one that will be read first.
5. In order for Microchips to really function as everyone would like to believe they do there could only be one chip company with one number identification system. In a country as large as the US that would just not work. Though it does work in Hong Kong that in order to import a dog into the country or adopt a dog from the shelter it must be micro-chipped with a specific brand and numbering system as well as inserted in a specific area. Then and only then can a microchip really serve its intended purpose. To reunite animals with their owners.
6. A Microchip can be surgically removed and no special permission from a previous owner need be given. Because there is no law that in order to treat an animal that it must be scanned there is no system in place to prevent the removal of an old chip in exchange for a new microchip.
I am not saying that you shouldn’t Microchip but as someone who knows that they don’t always work the way they should I am saying know the facts so that you can make the most educated decision for your family. That might be going to the local shelter and asking what Microchip scanner they use. It might be getting the chip inserted in a vet that uses a more universal Microchip Manufacturer. It might mean that you chip and always ensure your pet is wearing an id tag.
It’s always a mistake to rely on one thing to the exclusion of every other smart method. This is a good reminder.
I only recently had Honey microchipped. My vet determined the type of chip least likely to migrate, decreasing the likelihood of one problem.
Another idea–add a special email to your pet’s tag. Use an autoresponder to send a message to anyone who finds your pet and yourself if your pet is found. Even if a microchip isn’t found, or a tracking company goes out of business, you can still be reached.
Pamela recently posted..Taste Doesn’t Matter – Good for the Dog; Good for You
I have been concerned about this for quite a while…ever since I asked my vet to find the microchip on one of our dogs (to SEE that this works) and, knowing that there is a chip,
he searched for quite a while, and then finally found it down and way over near a shoulder. So, then I realized that a chip may not be found, so I got one of those collar ID’s where the ID is flat and is threaded through the collar and can’t be lost.
Yes Pamela has a good point – never rely solely on one thing! Both of our dogs are chipped, and I try to make sure their collars not only have their tags, but also some type of engraving on them.
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And collars and tags can be lost, or removed much more easily than a chip, by someone with nefarious intent, proving that those are useless, too, and the only solution is to have your dogs surgically attached to you…
No, wait, something wrong there.
No technology is perfect. There is in fact, at least in the US, a standard place to insert the chip–between the shoulder blades.
The slippage problem is known, and chips have been changed to be less susceptible to slippage. In shelters that place a priority on scanning to reunite pets with owners, the shelter workers know to scan the whole body if no chip is found in the expected place.
Most chip companies make their chips readable by any company’s chip reader. Even AVID, while it won’t allow the number to be read, causes their chips to display AVID on non-AVID scanners.
The most common reason that chips aren’t found is failure to scan. The most common reason that finding a chip doesn’t lead to a successful reunion is that the pet owner never registered the chip after it was inserted, or didn’t update their contact information after a move.
Chips aren’t magic. They don’t guarantee your lost pet will be found and returned to you. They are not a substitute for collar and tags, which ANYONE can read without a scanner, if the collar or tags have not become separated from your pet.
But they are an additional precaution. They make your pet a little safer, and have been responsible for a lot of reunions.
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We have 2 chips each, one European (since we were there first) and on US and they are both in different places since most countries put them in one place but others in another. We have the US chips registered because they are most likely to be read. Nothing is failproof, even tags can get lost but we just like to have the best forms of ID possible in case we ever get lost. It would be ideal if the entire world could use the same chips on the same frequency in the same place on the body but that most likely will never happen.
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I agree microchips certainly aren’t failsafe, but are a good backup to a collar. And as far as collars go, I get the type where your name and number are stitched right into the collar. That way if the tags fall off, a number is still available. Another good thing to note is the pet-use GPS units are getting smaller and more affordable. So there is now another way to keep track of and locate your lost pet.
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Actually, scanners do pick up a chip regardless of what brand it is. And vet clinics and shelters can tell what brand they are because of the way the numbers are. We could always tell the difference between Home Again and Avid numbers when we scanned for chips and knew which company to call. I personally would scan the animals all over their body even to the tip of their tail. Most vet offices and shelters know that chips can shift so they scan everywhere, of course I’m sure there are some people who don’t… I’ve seen a microchip fall out maybe twice. They certainly aren’t a perfect answer, though. I think the biggest problem I’ve personally seen with them is that people get them but don’t register them or move and the chip company doesn’t have correct information on the pet’s owners.
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