There's No Place Like Home

 Unfortunately, only about 14% of the dogs and 3% of the cats are reunited with their owners. We all know how emotionally wrenching it can be to have a beloved pet disappear from home. However, there are steps that you can take to increase the likelihood that your pet will be returned to you. A basic collar and ID tag with the owner's name and phone number is a good place to start. Tags are available at Cypress Wood and Wiles Road Animal Hospital's front desks. The rabies tag issued by our hospital lists our hospital name and tag serial number. This number is kept on file at our office and allows us to match it to your pet. We have reunited several pets with their owners in this way.

For those of you with pets who possess Houdini-like attributes and constantly lose their collars, there is a permanent identification method available, microchip implantation. A microchip (the size of a grain of rice) is placed under the skin between the shoulder blades. The chip's identification number, along with pertinent pet and owner information, is registered with a central administration office. When a lost pet is taken to a shelter or veterinarian's office, a small handheld scanner is passed over the animal's body and the chip number registers on the L.E.D. display. The central registration office is contacted with this information and the owner is notified of the pet's location. The chip implantation is quick, simple, and no more painful than receiving a vaccine injection.

Components of the microchip system include the microchip (far left), the injector (above left), and the scanner (above right).