Bad Reasons to Re-Chip:
The microchip type is unreadable in the U.S. or is an “international chip”
False! Although the United States has not yet standardized our pet microchips, we have abundant ISO standard microchips here, too. So basically, the microchip world looks like this:
All three frequencies commingle happily in our national microchip melting pot. “But wait,” you may say, “If my vet/shelter/rescue’s scanners aren’t reading all frequencies, how will they find those microchips?” They won’t. If your organization has an outdated non-universal scanner, it will miss chips. That means hardworking American pets with perfectly good registered microchips will not be able to make it home. Do your part to help our country’s cats and canines by educating your community! (Even better, why not hold a pet fundraiser and donate a new universal scanner?)
The microchip company no longer exists, is too expensive or is downright rude
As frustrating as our two-legged brethren in customer service can be, double-chipping won’t make the first chip disappear. Luckily, you aren’t tied to that company. Thanks to the AAHA’s Universal Pet Microchip Lookup Tool, shelters and vets can search any U.S. microchip and see exactly where it is registered.
Even if your microchip is registered with a different company than the one that originally sold it, animal care professionals will be able to find your registration immediately using this free website. Many microchips are cross-registered anyway, so this website is really the only way to know for sure which company has pet owner contact information for a microchip. Therefore, all shelters and vets should use this tool as the first step in getting pets home. Use whichever registry you like. Just make sure your registry participates in the Pet Microchip Lookup Tool*. If not, your pet will be at the mercy of a lucky guess.
(*At time of writing, all common microchip registries participate in petmicrochiplookup.org except for Avid. A current list of AAHA’s participating companies is available on their website).
Tip: If you don’t want to update multiple registrations for the same chip, at least provide the old company with your new registry’s phone number, email, etc. This will allow the old company to point callers toward your current registration.
Good Reasons to Re-Chip:
The owner is moving out of the country and needs an international chip
As you may recall from our “5 Things You Didn’t Know About Microchips” blog, many countries require a 15-digit, 134.2kHz ISO standard chip. It’s not really accurate to call it an “international chip,” because we have plenty of them in the U.S., too. We just don’t mandate it. Check animal codes in the destination country to see if “ISO 11784” or “ISO 11785” compliant pet microchips are required. Remember, just knowing the chip company is not enough to tell whether your existing chip is compliant. Look to length – if the microchip number is less than 15 digits, the microchip is not ISO standard, so go ahead and re-chip away. Not traveling after all? Your 9 or 10 digit microchip will still work just fine here in the States.
The microchip has migrated, is no longer working or has fallen out
Microchip migration is actually very rare. A major BSAVA microchip study examining 3.7 million pets found that true migration occurs in less than 1 out of 10,000 cases! Microchip failure is even less common. In the vast majority of instances where a chip is “unreadable,” a non-universal scanner is really to blame. It’s worth perusing our microchip scanner cheatsheet and having a talk with your vet to be sure she is scanning for all three chip frequencies before re-chipping.
If your pet’s chip is among the migrated minority, you may need to do some soul-searching and see whether a second microchip makes sense for your pet. If animal professionals don’t scan thoroughly, your pet’s chip may be missed. If your pet ends up with two microchips, you will need to register and update both registrations for the same reason.
A: It is injected under the skin using a hypodermic needle. It is no more painful than a typical injection, although the needle is slightly larger than those used for injection. No surgery or anesthesia is required—a microchip can be implanted during a routine veterinary office visit. If your pet is already under anesthesia for a procedure, such as neutering or spaying, the microchip can often be implanted while theyre still under anesthesia.
Some of the animal-related factors that can make it difficult to detect a microchip include the following: animals that wont stay still or struggle too much while being scanned; the presence of long, matted hair at or near the microchip implantation site; excessive fat deposits in the region of implantation; and a metal collar (or a collar with a lot of metal on it). All of these can interfere with the scanning and detection of the microchip.
Your pets rabies tag should always be on its collar, so people can quickly see that your pet has been vaccinated for this deadly disease. Rabies tag numbers also allow tracing of animals and identification of a lost animals owner, but it can be hard to have a rabies number traced after veterinary clinics or county offices are closed for the day. The microchip databases are online or telephone-accessed databases, and are available 24/7/365.
In 2009, the American Animal Hospital Association launched their Universal Pet Microchip Lookup Tool (www.petmicrochiplookup.org), which provides a listing of the manufacturer with which the microchips code is associated as well as if the chip information is found in participating registries. The database does not provide owner information for the microchip – the user must contact the manufacturer/database associated with that microchip.
A: Definitely! In fact, a study of more than 7,700 stray animals at animal shelters in 23 states showed that microchipped animals are far more likely to be returned to their owners. In that study, microchipped stray dogs were returned to their owners at more than double the overall rate for all stray dogs (both microchipped and not microchipped). For stray cats, the difference in return rates was even more dramatic.