Pop quiz time, WVH friends! Who can tell me what this tiny object is, and why it is so important, especially with all the big, nasty storms we’ve been having lately?

Yes, this is a microchip. They are smaller than a grain of rice and easily implanted underneath your pet’s skin via an injection. Collars can come off, tags can get worn down until they are unreadable, but a microchip can serve as a permanent form of identification and proof of ownership.

This is especially important during holidays with fireworks, or stormy seasons like this, when even pets who normally won’t leave the house may get scared and run away. We have been seeing a lot of lost dogs brought in over the last week who likely went missing during the big storms. Each microchip contains a registration number for the chip. A handheld scanner reads the radio frequency of the chip and displays this information. We are able to scan the chip and read the number to the manufacturing company (or find it in our own hospital database, if the pet is one of our patients here) to look up what family the pet belongs to and their contact information!

HOWEVER, this only works if you register (and update) your contact information with the microchip company. Otherwise, we are able to read the chip number and find out what company made it, but all they will be able to tell us is what company they sold the chip to (basically, the facility that microchipped your pet). That facility may or may not have the records of who adopted the pet based on the chip number. Basically, it makes it much more difficult and time consuming to get in touch with you, and it’s much harder to reunite you with your beloved pets!

Long story short: one of the best things you can do to reunite your pet quickly with you when he or she goes missing is to microchip them, and to register his or her microchip with your current contact information! If you think your pet has a microchip but aren’t sure, you can bring them in for a quick visit here at Woodland Veterinary Hospital ! There’s no charge for us to scan for a chip, and we’ll even look up the company it’s registered with if you can’t remember which one it is! Let’s work together to keep your pets safe this year

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