Blog Post: Microchip Your Dog for a Lifetime of Protection

April 15-21 is National Pet ID Week. To support this important pet safety campaign, Camp Bow Wow Agoura Hills, the premiere doggy day camp and overnight camp, is teaming with Agoura Hills Animal Hospital on a MICROCHIP YOUR DOG event, Saturday, April 28, from 1p.m. to 4p.m. at Camp Bow Wow, located at 29348 Roadside Drive in Agoura Hills.  The all-inclusive $20 fee coves the cost of the microchip, inserting the microchip in the dog and lifetime registration with Home Again, the national pet recovery database.

Sadly, millions of dogs become lost every year simply because they wandered away from their home and weren’t wearing a collar and ID tag.  All too often, collars and ID tags slip off making it nearly impossible to reunited pups with their human companions. Many lost and unidentified dogs end up in shelters where they are adopted out to new homes or, even worse, euthanized. But technology has made it possible to provide your pooch with a permanent form of identification – the microchip.

About the size of a grain of rice, a microchip is a tiny computer chip housed in a type of glass that is designed to be compatible with living tissue. Trained veterinarians, using a needle and special syringe much like a vaccination, implant the microchip under a dog’s skin just between its shoulder blades. Most dogs don’t even seem to feel it being implanted.

Once the microchip is placed, responsible pet owners must then register the dog’s microchip with a company such as Home Again, a national pet recovery database that protects your pooch for life. Then, if the dog is ever lost or stolen, a handheld device that uses radio waves can detect and read the unique code on the chip that identifies the dog and its owner.  The Camp Bow Wow/Agoura Hills Animal Hospital Microchip Your Dog $20 fee includes lifetime registration for your dog with Home Again!

No method of pet identification is flawless but by micro-chipping and registering your dog, you’re increasing your odds of a quick and safe reunion if you pup does go missing. Of course, keeping a collar on your dog at all times and ensuring that your dog is registered with the local animal control agency also helps, and so does never allowing your dog to roam free without supervision. If your dog does become lost, microchip identification is one more tool to use in locating and returning your beloved companion.