Microchipping – law changes
16
Mar
- From April 6th 2016 all dogs must be microchipped and registered on a commercial database, by 8 weeks of age. Further if a dog’s ownership is transferrred, the owner has a further duty to register the microchip with the new owner.
A microchip is the size of a grain of rice.
- Although there is no requirement in law at the present time, we also recommend microchipping all cats.
- A microchip is roughly the size of a grain of rice and is placed under the skin between the shoulder blades. The procedure is very quick (only taking a few seconds) . The microchip contains a 15 digit unique number that will be registered on a national database, together with the owner’s details. It is not a GPS tracker device. It does however ensure permanent identification for your pet, and the number is easily read in seconds by passing a reader device over the skin .
- We regularly have strays handed into our surgeries and the first thing we check them for is a microchip. It is very important to keep your information up to date on your pets microchip – don’t forget – if you move house, get a new phone number, change your email address – make sure you change your pets microchip information so you can always be contacted.
- This will provide many benefits especially in re-uniting injured pets and strays with their owners. Approximately 126000 stray dogs were handled by UK authorities in 2010-2011 and 52% were unable to be returned to their owners as they were unidentifiable.
