|
 Microchipping is available upon request for an additional charge. It is a very quick procedure, painless and harmless.
Although the number of dogs euthanized in shelters is a small fraction of the estimates that have been bandied about for years, there are still too many healthy dogs dying because their owners can't find them and too many owners heartbroken at the loss of their pets. There are also lots of stray dogs that wind up in rescues, no-kill shelters, and with new owners because the original owner cannot be located. Statewide dog license laws are supposed to help return lost dogs to their owners, but they don't work very well. Few people obey the law, and many dogs lose their collars and tags somewhere between the yard they escaped from and the truck that carts them to the shelter. Owners of purebred show and breeding dogs have long used tattoos to comply with the rules of identification of the American Kennel Club and to provide permanent, visible identification should their dogs get lost. Many pet owners also tattoo their dogs to prevent loss. But tattoos have a drawback as well; although they cannot get separated from the dog as tags can, they can be hard to find and read if the dog is frightened, aggressive or has a heavy haircoat, so few shelters make the effort.
Enter the microchip, a tiny transponder the size of a grain of uncooked rice. This is a permanent radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip implanted under the dog's skin and read by a chip scanner or wand. Implantation is done with an injector that places the chip under the loose skin over the dog's shoulder. The advantages are obvious — the process is quick and no more painful than a vaccination, the chip can't get lost, the number is unique, the dog doesn't have to be wrestled to the ground and shaved to see if it's there, and the owners name and address are available on regional or national data bases so a dog can be returned quickly and safely. The chip identification number is stored in a tiny transponder that can be read through the dog's skin by a scanner emitting low-frequency radio waves. The frequency is picked up by a tiny antenna in the transponder, and the number is retrieved, decoded, and displayed in the scanner readout window. The radio waves use a frequency much lower than AM broadcast stations use, and they must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission before they can be marketed. The chip, antenna, and capacitor are encased in a tiny glass tube. The tube is composed of soda lime glass, which is known for compatibility with living tissue. The glass is hermetically sealed to keep moisture out. Two companies, Schering-Plough Animal Health and AVID, share the bulk of the business of pet identification by microchip. In 1996, Schering-Plough Animal Health, marketer of the HomeAgain™ microchip identification system, announced distribution of a universal scanner by Destron-Fearing* that can read all microchips and removed a major obstacle to widespread acceptance of pet identification with the new technology. Until then, no one scanner could read the chips of all the US manufacturers, a situation that impeded efforts to involve shelters in a national effort to return stray dogs to their owners through a chip program. The new scanners were given to thousands of shelters throughout the country so that quick and easy identification of those dogs with microchips could be achieved. There are some drawbacks. AVID® encoded its chips so that the number cannot be read, even by the HomeAgain™ universal scanner. Unless the shelter has an AVID® scanner, the best it can do is identify that a chip from AVID® is present. Thus it is still necessary to have access to at least two scanners in order to assure that the chip number can be retrieved. A few chips do move out of place and can't be found by the scanner, a problem that Schering-Plough's Destron system addressed with a polypropylene shell on the tip of its transponder. This coating bonds the transponder to the dog's subcutaneous tissue. Dogs can be scanned when picked up by an animal control officer or brought to the shelter. If a chip is present, the scanner will read the number and the shelter staff member can call the appropriate registry for the identity of the owner. As a double protection for dogs chipped with HomeAgain™, veterinarians who install the chips have scanners. Thus a found pet can be taken to a veterinary clinic for scanning and may never make the trip to a shelter. Both Leia and Persyphora are microchipped. |
