ID Tags & Microchips

Pet identification is more than just giving your pet some identity. The information on dog identification tags help lost pets into finding their way home. An American Human Association report said only a few of lost pets, which are temporarily sheltered in city pounds every year, are claimed by their owners. Millions of other unidentifiable pets have to be needlessly destroyed due to financial cost.

If you don't want your pet to suffer the same grim fate, ID tags and microchips can greatly improve your pet's chance of survival. Stray animals are becoming a nuisance to society not only because of their presence but because they bring vectors of diseases transmittable to humans (such as the Lyme disease and rabies). In addition, stray animals are also one cause of vehicular accidents.

Animals seen wandering in cities are also prone to starvation and trauma, risking people around them with their undesirable behaviors – they frighten or even kill little children and the elderly. ID tags containing your personal information like your name, address, and phone number greatly hastens returning of your pet to you. Pet tags can also lessen your worries over finding your pet.

Today, there are a couple methods to identify your pets: ID tags and microchips.

Pet ID Tags

Pet ID tags can be fun accessories for pets – they are available in a selection of designs, shapes, and colors. If you have a design in mind, many online stores accept custom ID tags that could feature your child's favorite cartoon character, and many others. You can choose from metal and plastic cat and dog ID tags.

Aside from identification purposes, veterinarians can also issue medical ID tags that contain information on rabies shots. Medical ID tags can serve as an easy reference for vets with regards to rabies immunizations. This will be easier for enforcers to determine whether an animal had received its immunizations for rabies.

In choosing pet ID tags, one of the considerations is the size of your pet. It is awkward for a small pet like Chihuahuas or cats to wear large tags. Your pet might not be able to express what it feels, but a large tag on such a small neck is definitely not a salt and pepper combination.

ID tags and microchips are both effective at helping stolen or lost pets find their owners - but the downside to conventional ID tags is they are easy to remove. Recently, pet microchip implant is fast becoming a logical method to pet identification.

Pet Microchips
The history of the microchip can be traced to farmers several years ago. Farmers found microchipping a convenient way to locate lost or stolen livestock. And until recently, the prevalence of stray animals or pets fueled the use of microchips on pets.

A microchip is a tiny electronic device encased in a biocompatible (a material that the body will not recognize as foreign) glass. It consists of a tiny coil and memory circuit, in which a serial number particular to the microchip is embedded. The microchip is tiny enough to fit in a hypodermic syringe, which veterinarians and some qualified technicians inject just beneath the skin, below the neck.

This said number is then stored in international databases and can be read using scanners. Upon registry, the pet owner's personal information is adjoined to the serial number. Manufacturers of microchips issue scanners to veterinarians, animal shelters, humane societies, and animal hospitals to easily identify stolen pets. However, the disadvantage of this method is the degree of incompatibility between scanners and microchips, which leaves other microchipped pets still unidentifiable.

Many loving pet owners look at their pets as family, and if protecting them means putting identification tags, then it is up to you to find a viable identification method that is acceptable to your pet.