Could Your Mobile Phone Save Your Dog?
Mobile phones are how millions of us choose to keep in contact with each other nowadays and it is also how we can keep in contact with our pets.
Putting your mobile phone number on your pet’s collar or tag so you can be reached quickly if your pet gets lost could be a potential lifesaver. Your pet is probably outside more in the summer and this is a time of the year when pets are more exposed to risk factors associated with loss/straying.
Speed of the recovery is important and mobile phones offer one of the best alternatives. Relative to the microchip implant (which you may want to use in addition to the collar/tag), it offers some very distinct benefits. The mobile phone number allows anyone who finds your pet to call you and allow you to reclaim your pet. The microchip has to be read by a reader — which means your pet would have to be found in a shelter or by a veterinarian who can read the chip, and since it uses RFID technology/radio waves, the read range is between 3 to 12 inches. It does not have GPS capability or use a satellite.
And, while most shelters have readers, they may not always be used or the shelter may have an older reader which can only read a specific brand of microchip or a reader that can detect that there is a microchip but can not decode it. Additionally, only a small percentage of pets have microchips. Microchips do offer a backup to a lost collar or tag.
So just think about it, if you haven’t already. Adding your mobile phone number to your pet’s collar and tag could end up giving you the fastest opportunity to be reunited.
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Hello I am the current Chairman of the National Dog Warden Association and you may be amazed to be informed that many if not all Dog Wardens carry microchip scanners in their vehicles! Most will scan at the scene where a dog is being held to try to locate a microchip, this can save on dogs having to go into kennels if the details are upto date.
The above claim that a dog would have to be found in a shelter or by a vet is therefore incorrect.
What the author of this article advocates is a good idea, but dog owners need to remember that they need to have by law the name and addess of the owner of the dog on the tag in the United Kingdom.
Along with that they can then have landline number, mobile number, vets number or what they want.
It is also a good idea to put a number of fall back telephone contact numbers both landline and mobile of friends and family on the microchip in case you may be out of the country and yuor dog runs away from somebody looking after it.
Approximately 40 percent of the dogs seized as stray dogs by the council I work for during financial year 2006/2007 that had a microchip, had incorrect or out of date details. The information contained on the microchips was of no use in tracing the owner.
As an additional back up, although my council uses the latest up to date scanners and will scan for a microchip at the scene, all dogs are rescanned at the holding kennels. This provides a failsafe double check in case of any scanner malfunction or other issue.
It also works when a dog is collected from a location that has a microchip scanner and you have been told that the dog has been scanned and no chip found, that has happened once this week and once last week in my area.
If it had been taken as read (pardon the pun)and the dogs were not scanned again, then these two dogs would not have been reunited by their microchips until much later when an owner made contact or perhaps further down the rehoming chain if they had not been claimed.
As a measure of good practice perhaps all dog wardens in the UK should scan at the scene, then ask the holding kennels they use to rescan as a back up measure if no microchip is found and it is taken to the kennels?
Thank you
Neil Burton
Chairman
National Dog Warden Association
http://www.ndwa.co.uk
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