The Pros and Cons of Microchipping

Microchips are basically tiny transponders about the size of a grain of rice. They are made up of a memory circuit and a miniaturized coil inside of a glass and can be injected with a hypodermic syringe because of their small size. Your veterinarian or other technician implants the microchip just under the skin between the shoulder blades, and the whole procedure takes only a minute or so. The chip’s memory circuit contains a unique number registered to your pet, which can be read by special scanners found in many veterinary offices and shelters. 

Here are some Pros and Cons of getting your pet microchipped: 

• The microchip is permanent. It can’t be dislodged once it’s been implanted and has a lifetime of 75 years.
• Implanting a microchip takes less than a minute with no anesthetic required
• Once implanted, the animal doesn’t even know it’s there.
• Microchips are a way of deterring theft of the pet or make theft easy to prove if the culprit is caught with the animal.
• Implanted chips are tamper-proof
• Microchips don’t disfigure a pet like tattoos.
• Microchips are, however, more expensive
• Because the technology is somewhat new, people still don’t think to take a found animal to a vet or shelter to have them scanned.
• Chips are becoming standardized, but there are still a couple of registries which can cause confusion. 

Microchipping is a great tool to help reunite pets with owners but they’re not foolproof. When a lost pet is picked up by an animal control officer or is taken to an animal shelter or human society, the workers there will use a handheld scanner, scan the animal, and determine if a microchip has been implanted. Microchips implanted before 2003 can be scanned and read by shelters and vets. Microchips that came into use in late 2003 are not readable by most shelters and vets because the chips require different kinds of scanners. So there is not yet one universal scanner than can read all different types of chips. 

While each owner must decide for himself or herself which method might be best, after researching this article, I am personally inclined to take a “shotgun approach” with a combination of microchipping and collar with tags. The microchip would be the source of a permanent record and the tags would give the owner’s name, phone number, and the fact that the animal is chipped.