Microchipping pets

luckat

Finding a dog yesterday brought it home to me how very important it is to put microchips in pets.

I brought the dog to the vets in Charlemont Street, and the first thing they did was to scan him for a chip. Nothing. And he'd managed to rid himself of the metal nametag bearing his name.

His owner turned up - many thanks to the Gardai at Harcourt Street - but the dog would have had a thousand times more chance to be returned to his owner if he'd been microchipped.

In fact, he's now about to be neutered - dog, not owner - and will have a microchip inserted under the skin on his shoulder at the same time.

May I ask pet owners here to please get their dogs and cats microchipped? If you have it done when they're being neutered or spayed it's cheap, because the animal's already under anaesthetic.

If there are vets on the forum, maybe they could comment on prices and so on.

(I'd also like to ask vets to keep a digital camera in the office, so they can take photos of found animals and post them instantly up on irishanimals.com - it would also be great for the pounds to do this.)

watty

Yes... then I'd know who owns the cats that eat our visting sparrows and stare for hours wistfully through the wire at our cavies and poo all over my completely enclosed 7ft high walled rear garden. (It's amazing what a Car can "springboard" off the jump a 7ft wall).

I *KNOW* who owns the dogs that poo on our front garden and dig up the plants etc as they are less smart than cats and take direct route home!


Why do people still let cats and dogs out loose on their own? This is why so many get run over or lost, not mythical thefts by so called "knackers".

The Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Blue tits, Great Tits and such seem smarter at keeping out of Cat Reach.

Enilorac

There's not much point in microchipping, unless there is a national database for registering /chipped animals. At the moment, in this country, no such registry exists.
Not all vet practices have scanners...so pretty pointless really!
Even in my own vet had a scanner, unless he'd chipped the animal himself he'd find it difficult to trace the owner of said animal....more hassle than he has time for.
So, whilst microchipping is a good idea in theory....without a national database, it is completely pointless!

luckat

There is a national and a European database. And I don't know any vets without scanners.

watty

The owners that let their dogs wander about unsupervised all day should be "chipped" AND "neutered" too.

luckat

Enilorac, I've followed this up a bit. The national database is held by Ani-Mark in Blackrock, Co Dublin (2887870 if you want to phone them.

While there isn't yet a trans-European database - though I had been told there was when I got my animals chipped - the Ani-Mark people have had a dog returned from Hungary, for instance, when it was scanned and found to have an Irish microchip.

The company that makes the microchips is in Lyon, and when vets across Europe scan and find a chip, they'll ring Lyon to find where this identifier is from, and track it to its national database.

Ani-Mark told me that there are currently about 20,000 animals microchipped in Ireland.

Britain is the country using them most; there are a million animals microchipped there.

The situation may change soon, because the Department of Agriculture is considering allowing dogs to be brought in directly from European countries (at the moment, if they've had their rabies vaccinations, they can come in, but only via Calais).

Ani-Mark tell me that it normally costs around 40 euro per animal to have it microchipped. When I had my animals done they were also being spayed, so it was cheaper, because they were already anaesthetised.