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Friday, September 3, 2010 | Serving Del Rio and Val Verde County: Since 1929
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Microchipping your pets
Published July 25, 2010
Having a pet microchipped is becoming a fairly popular practice with pet owners recently.
A microchip allows lost pets to be reunited with owners through the use of a microchip scanner, however without a scanner the microchips are useless.
Currently, the Del Rio animal shelter has only one microchip scanner to go around.
Fundraising efforts have been made recently toward purchasing additional scanners for the animal shelter.
Cactus Country Handgun Training and Debbie’s Dog Grooming hosted a charity pistol match on July 10.
With more scanners available to the community lost cats and dogs will have an increased chance of being returned to their owners.
During a veterinary clinic last week at Laughlin Air Force Base, veterinary technicians saw more than 65 pets for routine vaccinations, heartworm testing, and microchipping.
In only three days, animal care specialists distributed all of the microchips they had on hand. The veterinary clinic returns to LAFB quarterly to see pets registered with the U.S. military.
The United States military uses HomeAgain microchips for all pets registered to military personnel.
Army Capt. Bethany Everett explained one positive aspect about microchipping a pet through the U.S. military is the availability of compatible microchip scanners worldwide. If a pet is lost on a duty station overseas, for example, a microchip scanner will be available to identify the animal.
A microchip is about the size of a grain of rice. The device is inserted by needle under the skin between the shoulder blades. Everett said inserting the microchip doesn’t hurt the animal, and is similar to getting a vaccine.
Each permanent chip holds a unique identification code, which corresponds to information entered into a computer database.
The scanner emits a low radio frequency that reads the code, which is then entered into the database to search for information.
Everett noted if a pet changes ownership the chip’s information is simply updated through HomeAgain.
HomeAgain is one of the two main electronic pet tagging systems used in the United States. According to HomeAgain, microchipping technology has helped find more than 600,000 pets to date.
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