Another, Why It Doesn't Work!
(With a happy ending :-)

Monday Dec. 5th 2005

I was working in the back office at Animal Samaritans SPCA today and had the opportunity to help reunite a lost dog with it's owner. This story has a happy ending and I wish all lost dog stories could end the same.

A woman called and informed me she had found a lost dog on Saturday afternoon and was very anxious to contact us. The dog had it's collar and a rabies tag. All of the rabies tags Animal Samaritans gives out have the Phone# of our Clinic on them and she wrote down the tag # and our phone# and began to try and reach us. Unfortunately there is no one to take calls over the weekend and she called early this morning and got our automated system and had left a message. She had to go to work today and had dropped off the dog at Animal Control (The right thing to do!) and then finally reached the desk where I was working by the phone.

I went to the computer typed in the # on the rabies tag and voila... I had the owners phone #. I called the owner and found they had been looking for the dog for 2 days. They were ecstatic when I told them the dog was at one of the local shelters and they left immediately to go retrieve their lost pet. The whole process took less than 5 minutes.

But, this started me to thinking.... What if the dog had lost its collar? Then how could the owner be reached? Well if we had implanted a MicroChip then maybe the shelter would have scanned the dog and called us. We could have identified the owner via the ID on the Chip. Yes we could have,.... but when I investigated how to do this  I found there was no way to do it on the computer. I would have had to go back to the paper copies of the chips when sold and lookup the owner from the chip list. Not good. 

So being extremely analytical I carried this to the next logical step. What if we had just had a major earthquake here in the valley and the paper records were not available? Now What? If the MicroChip was registered in a National Data Base then it could be looked up online. But only a small # of the chips we sell get registered nationally. So the solution is to have an offsite Data Base of this critical information. Something to think about.

Bottom Line.... This story has a happy ending! But shouldn't this be a wake up call for other Pet Owners.... Have an ID tag with your phone# on your pet! Register those MicroChips! Work to get a 24/7 system in place so lost animals can get home..... even on weekends.

Judd