When Adopting A New Dog, Update Or Install A Chip!

I do not believe we can stress this enough, in that adding an ID microchip to your pet is an invaluable service that can come in handy some day.

Now if you don't care about your dog, that's fine. Who needs to spend money on a chip with you have a collar, right? Wrong... collars can come off or even be removed and that's that. Your dog is now fight bait.

I was just reading a piece on where a man's boat had sunk, and he thought his dog had drowned also. But the dog escaped the sinking boat, swam a mile to shore, then made his way to a church that the man and his dog frequented.

Though the man did not update the microchip information, the pastor and local law enforcement did the math, knew a man had lost his boat and dog, and after putting the pieces together, reunited them.

What an awesome story.

But a few things came to mind in regards to this situation.

1: The man adopted the dog but never updated the microchip. Always update your microchip information when you adopt a new pup. It truly is super simple.

2: Do an annual double check on the information in the microchip database to make sure all information is up to date. Just in case someone who is part of the background process does something stupid or nefarious.

3: Had there been no microchip, he should have "installed" one.

4: For those who think dogs are just animals, events like this, where the dog swam to shore then found his way to their church to find his human seems to put your callous mindset off in the category of animal ignorance.


Dogs (and cats) aren't as stupid as people try to make them out to be. I watched my grandparents leave their cat home in Rhode Island, and then a few weeks later I watched it walk up to the front door of their summer vacation spot in Maine, bloody paws and all.

Or all the stories about animals walking many miles to get home. Animals aren't stupid.

5: In this story of the drowning dog, thank god the town this took place in did not have that ignorant breed ban in place, or they would have just offed the poor pit bull just for going home.

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The dog picked the church to "go home" to because he and his human lived on a boat and that sank. So he was double smart in going to the church location.

The process of microchipping involves your vet injecting a tiny microchip with an identifying tag in it. These tags can be read by any vet that has a scanner. (Who doesn't these days?)

The tag number associated with the chip is kept in an online database from the chip maker and your information is put into the database, associated with the tag that is associated with the chip that is in your dog.

Microchips last around 25 years.

Any way, I thought I'd share that and say, hey, get a microchip for your dog (or cat?) if you don't already have one. The money spent is so worth it. 

Double check to make sure your database information is correct, at least on an annual basis. Trust me, when computers go rogue, you do not want to be the last one to find out that a computer problem or evil IT person changed your information.

Remember to update your personal information in the chip database like if you need to report an address change.

And in case you had not seen it yet, I added my latest dock diving adventures to my Facebook album!