Your Puppies Need a Chip on Their Shoulder

By Caroline Coile

When Christi Halliday trustingly placed the German Shepherd she’d bred in the car of a policeman she had no idea his fate would ultimately rest on the microchip registered in her name. The policeman sent the dog to a kennel for training—a kennel nobody suspected was starving and abusing the dogs in its care. Months later the dog was found running loose alongside a highway where he’d been dumped to get rid of “evidence.” An animal shelter scanned him, found a chip still registered in Halliday’s name, and contacted her. She immediately drove the five hours to retrieve him. “I brought him home, nursed him back to health and gave him a loving home for the rest of his life,” reports Halliday, adding, “The kennel owner is still in jail.”

Lynne Ezzell took in two Italian Greyhounds that had been seized due to neglect. The shelter had not scanned them because it was a seizure case, so Ezzell scanned them as soon as she got them. The chip was still in the breeder’s name. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered the dogs had been bred by a long-time friend. She had no idea they had been in peril and was thrilled to get them back. She didn’t even know the owner had moved to another state.”

The rescue assumed the Cardigan Welsh Corgi that was found in the middle of a busy street was a mix. But when a foster home had her chip read they traced her to her breeder, Cathy Chapel. One problem: “Once they found out she was purebred and we were breeders they started withholding information. We contacted local law enforcement. That got action and our breed rescue was able to secure her. Her previous owners were never found. Her forever home is here.” Chips attest to ownership.

Susan Farrar Shepherd was horrified when a chip company contacted her telling her a Pekingese registered to her had been in a terrible car accident. The owner had been airlifted to a hospital, but the crated dog was unharmed—and on his way to the shelter. “I called the shelter panicked she was in a cage with big dogs, she is a Pekingese in full coat, the shelter manager informed me she was the fanciest dog he had ever seen and she was in his air-conditioned office.” She was lucky.

They seemed like an ideal couple for an Afghan Hound. When their purchase check bounced, breeder Eddie Kominek believed their story about changing banks. When they missed making any of the promised payments, Kominek let it slide, believing a good home was more important. But when the police department in another state called reporting they had a dog with a chip registered to Kominek, it was “strike three,” in Kominek’s words, and he reclaimed her himself. “Dani” has since lived a pampered life in a new home.

Michaella Okon was surprised when a shelter contacted her about a Saluki she had bred. The owner surrendered the dog and never even contacted her. She was able to retrieve him.

The stories go on and on: Breeders reunited with puppies they chipped and registered in their own names. Sometimes they were able to contact the owners and tell them their dog had been picked up even before the owner realized it was missing; sometimes the owner was incapacitated and unable to recover their dog; sometimes the owner was done with the dog and never told the breeder; and sometimes the chip was the only means allowing the breeder to lay claim on the dog.

Mary Beth McManus was in a shelter when she spotted a “mix” that was a Border Terrier. The shelter had the information from the dog’s microchip but had not contacted anyone because the dog was an owner surrender. “I called the number and the woman who answered immediately started crying. Her husband had told her he’d placed the dog in a great home and she assumed the dog was safe. Sometimes the breeder is the last to know.”

McManus, who has worked in purebred rescue, points out that even when surrender forms have a question asking where the current owner got the dog, many people leave it blank. “They may not want the breeder contacted, either because of embarrassment or because they have a bad opinion of them.” She says that even with written contracts prohibiting the new owner from giving a dog away or placing them in a shelter it happens, often with not a word to the breeder.

Oliver, a three-year-old Tibetan Mastiff, witnessed his human family brutally murdered by their son. The son holed up in a standoff with SWAT in his mother’s home where Oliver remained. The SWAT team shot tear gas into the house and blew the front door off with explosives. Somehow, Oliver survived this ordeal only to find himself as a surrender in a kill shelter. Because he was a surrender, the shelter failed to check for a chip. By the time his deceased owners’ next of kin discovered his breeder’s contact information, Oliver had only five days left. “A quick trip on a plane and a 1,000-mile drive home and Oliver is safe, rebuilding his life here with us, his breeders, his first family,” reports breeder Dan Nechemias. But Oliver’s situation illustrates the need for shelters to check all microchips, even on surrenders, as there is often a breeder or secondary contact unaware of their dog’s dire straits. Urge your local shelters to check for chips on all dogs, even surrenders, as chips provide a safety net of other concerned parties.

Don’t wait until you place your puppies and rely on the new home to chip them. Chip them and register them yourself before placing them, and insist that your name remains on the papers as a contact. If you’re concerned about the added cost, simply add it to the purchase price.

Heidi Lindblom Kilgore says it’s part of her contract that her contact information is always the last on the microchips. She points out that most shelters consider this as proof of ownership. “Also, as a breeder, I can enter the microchip in the AKC registration papers when I register the dog online.” One time a dog she had placed in another state escaped the dog sitter while the family was on vacation. The shelter wasn’t able to get in touch with anyone else, so they contacted her and she drove from Indiana to Wisconsin to retrieve the dog.

But some breeders want more than a voluntary addition to the chip paperwork. Betty-Anne Stenmark suggests that AKC should provide a spot on their microchip paperwork where the breeder’s contact information would remain for life. The owner could be added or even changed as ownership changed, but the breeder’s name could not be removed.

Some breeders deal with this by registering all their puppies with themselves as primary contact. They add and update the owners’ names later, but their name remains as the primary. Interestingly many if not most rescue groups chip all their dogs before releasing them to new homes. Breeders can surely do the same.

Stephanie Hunt Crowley points out another reason to chip all your puppies: “I started chipping every puppy before the sale because I was sick of finger-pointing in the direction of the nearest breeder whenever one of my breed came into a shelter, and for me, that meant a four state area to start off with. In my breed for a dog to end up in rescue or in a shelter was the eighth deadly sin and fingers would be whizzing around like windmills trying to find its target with keyboard warriors thumping out ‘WHO is the breeder???’ So that if a dog did end up in a shelter for any reason I could ask about the chip and NO CHIP, NOT MY DOG!”

We’ve all heard the stories where animals have been reunited with their owners after years of absence, or many states away, but more often, the chips are doing their job one small reunion at a time, with countless calls resulting in happy endings. Microchips have revolutionized the ability to reunite dogs and their owners—and also, breeders. Microchipping all your puppies in your name is part of being a responsible breeder and taking responsibility for life.

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Posted by admin on Sep 1 2019. 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.