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Pet microchips lead to joyful reunions.

You see them every day — signs tacked to telephone polls or coffee shop bulletin boards — lost pet notices. Some have a picture, some offer rewards, some are typed, some are just scrawled in a frantic hand, but they all convey a sense of the owner’s desperate urgency to find their lost pet. The sad fact is that most of these lost pet notices don’t end with a happy story. Over 4 million pets are euthanized each year. Sadder still is that many of these pets have simply been separated from loving homes where family members would do anything to get these animals safely home.

Microchipping Technology: A Savior for Lost Pets

Microchipping for pets might sound like something out of a science fiction film, but in reality, this method is the safest, cheapest way to make sure your pet can always be identified. When considering the benefits of microchipping, the facts speak for themselves: six to eight million pets enter U.S. shelters each year and many of those animals are lost. One in three family pets will get lost in their lifetimes and without I.D., 90 percent of those pets will never be returned home. A microchip, simply put, gives lost pets the best fighting chance of being found.

How Microchipping Works

The system is utilized when a microchip with a unique ID number is injected between the shoulder blades of your pet. This procedure can be done by a veterinarian if your pet is not already microchipped. The average cost of such a procedure is a $45 flat fee. The process is relatively painless, probably similar to getting one’s ears pierced. Once your pet is microchipped, the next step is enrolling your pet's microchip ID, along with your contact information, with a recovery service that works with the National Pet Recovery Database.

This step is critical to reuniting you immediately with your lost pet once he is found. One such service is HomeAgain, which claims to recover over 10,000 pets a month — 120,000 each year and over 600,000 since the service started operating ten years ago. These statistics add up to one overwhelmingly positive result — a tiny microchip gives your lost pet the best fighting chance of being returned home safely.

A Nationwide Digital Dragnet

Shelters and pet recovery services now check all pets for chips as soon as they arrive as standard procedure. If your pet has a chip, its chances of being returned to you are dramatically increased. And many services offer more than just a microchip. For example, the service offered by HomeAgain Pet Recovery will instantly send lost pet alerts to animal shelters, veterinary clinics, and volunteer PetRescuers in the area your pet was lost as a standard part of their membership services.

Safe and Effective

Despite the benefits, microchips have been slow to catch on with many pet owners. To date, only three to four percent of dogs — and less than one percent of cats — arriving in shelters have microchips. If those numbers were higher, a lot more lost pets would be going home to warm houses and worried owners. Collars are a great way to identify pets, but a collar can get lost or a pet can become lost at a time when they are not wearing their tags. Microchips are the only permanent form of pet identification, with a unique number that cannot fall off, be altered, or be removed. A lot of people are afraid the technology will harm their pets, but the procedure and the chips have undergone extensive testing. The fact is, the chips are probably safer than the average dog collar.

Do you have your pets microchipped? Do you know a pet who was found because of microchipping? Share your stories below!