Microchipping – Friend and Foe

By Pilar Kuhn

Over the last decade, microchipping animals has turned into an every-day “no brainer” for most breeders.  Before sending puppies home, most have a microchip inserted between the shoulder blades for better identification purposes,  for record keeping and “lost and found” capabilities.  The AKC encourages microchipping via registration forms and their AKC Reunite program.  Foreign dog registries require a microchip on all paperwork for any dogs entering countries and the USDA also requires the same for dogs entering the United States.  It has become a global standard for dog care and transportation.

But, what happens when a shelter or vet’s office doesn’t have the most current scanner and a dog appears to not have a microchip?  In some cases, the dog may not have the actual microchip inside.  We have personally experienced a few different circumstances regarding this issue.  A bitch we acquired from a colleague and long-time breeder had been microchipped. However, with multiple scanners at multiple service providers, we came to the conclusion that she had no microchip. The microchip could have somehow slipped out at the time of insertion. We had her re-microchipped and every instance since then, the scanners pick up her microchip.

In a different situation, a puppy we bred and microchipped ourselves flinched at the insertion of the lance.  As we prepared to microchip another puppy, we espied a microchip on the floor.  Obviously, the flinching puppy had to be re-microchipped.  When his new owners took him in for a vet check after getting him home (our regular request for all puppy buyers), their vet scanned and found the microchip without any issues.  In yet another instance, a puppy buyer’s vet couldn’t get a microchip to scan.  Because we had had lengthy conversations with this buyer about why we felt it was better to have a puppy microchipped than not, the owner insisted the vet try again or get a different scanner. Before the vet found the other scanner, he said he believed that many breeders say they microchip to try to command a higher sale price, but don’t.  Right after making that statement, the replacement scanner picked up the microchip we had inserted and confirmed with our own vet prior to handing over any of our puppies. This puppy’s owner felt justified in letting the vet know to re-think his ideas about breeders.

The “bad scanner” situation is a big problem. In one such sad situation, an intact bitch managed to escape her yard and found her way to the local shelter.  The shelter’s scanner did not pick up her microchip so she sat at the shelter for almost two weeks.  The owners, for some reason, waited some time before informing the breeder about her disappearance.  Once the breeder was informed of the missing bitch, she managed to locate the bitch on the shelter’s website, contact the shelter, and found out that because she had been in the shelter as long as she had, she had been spayed and placed.  The breeder was crushed.  The whole situation could have been easily avoided had the scanner at the shelter picked up the microchip. If it had, the breeder would have been contacted immediately for she was listed as the secondary point of contact.  This breeder managed to work with the shelter to contact the new owners and let them know about the girl they now had.  It was the microchip scanner that let this breeder and her bitch down.

Technology has improved upon the actual microchips and claim they are universally recognized, but vet offices and shelters haven’t necessarily upgraded to the most modern and current scanners and prove too often all microchips are not universally recognized. The first true step to good pet recovery is having current scanners of differing types and double-checking animals in case one or the other doesn’t recognize a microchip. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter what responsible breeders do to help keep track of the puppies they bring into the world. What can be done to prevent this type of scenario happening again?  Vets and shelters need to upgrade their scanners. The long-term investment to upgrade scanners seems like peanuts to me, especially given the average cost of an office visit these days.

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Posted by chesliepickett on Jan 21 2014. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.