June Is National Micro-Chipping Month
“June is National Microchipping Month.” - Sara Barnes
The law states that all dogs over 8 weeks old should be microchipped, and it is the responsibility of the owner to keep the microchip details up to date. Most people when they move house or change their mobile number, remember to let the bank, and utility companies the new contact details, but many forget to change their dogs tag. If they forget that which is attached to their dogs collar, the chances are that the details on the database that the microchip is registered on will not be up to date either.
There is a £500 fine if you are caught with the details on the database not being up to date, but lets be honest the most important thing is that if the details are incorrect then the chances of your dog being returned to you if it was to be lost are very low. In the 2019/20 study conducted by the Dogs Trust about dogs that were handed over to local authorities (LA's) as strays it was reported a total of 1678 dogs who could not be reunited with their owners due to incorrect microchip details, but 6464 were reunited with their owners because their microchip details were correct. This is out of 28,565 dogs that were handed in to LA's as strays.
41% of all dogs handled by LA's could not be reunited with their owners.
These figures are not 100% complete as only 214 LA's reponded to the survey out of the 379 asked to take part, and mnay LA's were not able to give numbers about how the dogs were reunited with owners as they didn't keep records about if the dog was wearing a tag or had up to date microchip details.
So why do I write a blog on this subject? I want you to check your dogs microchip details are correct, so that if the worst should happen and you lose your dog they can be returned to you, even if they lose their tag.
If you don't know or have lost your microchip paperwork, then take your dog to vets and get them to scan for the chip. They might even have a note on the dogs file about which database it is registered on.
