Give Your Pet a Gift That Will Keep Them Coming Home – An Identification Microchip

Microchipping is a safe, quick procedure that can be performed any time your pet is at your veterinarian’s office.

It involves injecting a tiny non-reactive glass capsule between the shoulder blades where it will remain for your pet’s life, waiting to be activated by a radio frequency microchip reader like this. There are no batteries in the chip itself, only a tiny crystal that stores a unique number for each pet. The chip reader induces the chip to send this number to the reader where it appears on a screen. Pets also wear a blue tag on their collar with this unique number, as well as the 800 phone number for the national microchip database.

When your pet is found wearing the collar, a call to the database will result in the return of your pet. If the collar is lost, when your pet is found, one of three scenarios is likely to unfold.

1. Your pet is recovered by a humane agent who carries a chip reader.

2. Your pet is turned into an animal shelter where they have protocols in place to check strays for microchips when they are admitted and then rechecked by the medical staff during their exam to make sure every pet is given a chance to come back home.

3. A person takes in a stray not wearing a collar and when they take the newly found pet to their veterinarian, we scan it for a microchip and call the database. This last scenario is common at our office and reuniting a happy pet with it’s ecstatic family really makes our day.

Another practical benefit of microchipping your pet is that the State of PA now permits the pet owner to get a one time LIFETIME LICENSE for your pet when it’s microchipped. This tremendous program is available to all PA residents, except those in the cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. For a one time fee of $31 for a spayed or neutered pet, you have permanent licensure and a stainless steel tag that will never wear out. The fee is higher for an un-neutered dog. Compared to the usual $7 / year licensing fee, this program provides a huge financial advantage to the owner of a young pet.

If your pet is already microchipped, this week is National Check the Chip Week on the Pet Calendar when we encourage pet owners to make sure their address and phone numbers registered with the Chip Database are current and accurate.

There are so many compelling reasons to provide your pet with identification microchipping, and we still have Microchips from last years County Discount Program with no Database registration fee which saves you $29, so please call our office today to have your pets microchipped by our Veterinary Technicians.

Pittsburgh Spay & Vaccination Clinic is a state-of-the-art, full-service suburban veterinary facility serving the Pittsburgh Area since 1980.. We offer diagnostic, medical, surgical, and dental care to dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits, and pocket pets in the Pittsburgh area.

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