The technical term is radio frequency identification – RFID for short – but you know it as a microchip: a compact computer chip, about the size of a grain of rice, that contains an ID number. In a painless procedure, the chip is injected by a vet under an animal’s skin. When registered on a database, the chip’s ID number connects to the pet’s vital stats, including his owner’s name, address, and telephone number. It’s a high-tech ID device that, unlike dog collars or tags, will never become separated from the animal.
In the past 10 years, microchipping has enabled happy homecomings for thousands of lost dogs that wouldn’t have stood a chance at seeing their families ever again. Now, when a stray dog turns up, the first order of business is to pass an electronic scanning device over his body. If the dog has been microchipped, his identity will be revealed and he’ll be on his way back home – provided, of course, that his owner took the critical step of registering the dog’s microchip by subscribing to the database for a small fee (and, if the given address or phone number has since changed, updating the contact information for an even smaller fee).
Happily, it’s become routine procedure at animal shelters across the country to microchip dogs at the point of adoption, so the animal may at least find his way back to the safety of the shelter, which then can contact the adopter in case the person never got around to registering. (Home Again, a microchip manufacturer, generously donates free scanners to animal shelters across the country for precisely this purpose.)
A caveat to those holdouts who elect not to have their dogs microchipped, advancing the “my dog will never run away from me” argument: stuff happens. What if you have a car accident and your dog is thrown from the vehicle while you’re taken to the hospital in an ambulance? What if a contractor working in your home accidentally lets the dog out? What if you’re out for a routine dog walk and some unexpected loud noise spooks your dog, who slips his collar in a panic and bolts, leaving his ID tags behind?
If microchipped, dogs in similar scenarios stand a chance of seeing their families again. Unfortunately for the thousands of animals who survived Hurricane Katrina only to be separated from their people, the majority were not microchipped, which has made reuniting Louisiana’s lost dogs with their people such a difficult, ongoing process.
But thanks to microchipping, literally hundreds of thousands of dogs across the country have safely returned home after becoming lost, some recovered against astonishing odds. Imagine being a little dog lost in New York City, home to more than 8 million residents. It happened in 2003 to a friendly mutt named Brownie. The retriever-spaniel mix took a ride on the Grand Central-bound Metro-North Commuter Railroad, boarding solo in Connecticut and landing at East 125th Street in Manhattan.
Dubbed Metro, the fare beater appeared in newspapers and on TV. Then a microchip scan revealed his real name and that of his former owner: Peggy Fulton, who had given Brownie away to another family. That family in turn had given Brownie to their son-in-law, a truck driver who brought the dog with him on the road. It was while driving through Connecticut that Brownie decided not to keep on trucking. So he stepped on the train, made headlines, and got himself reunited with his original family, the Fultons (who vowed never to give him away again).
OK, so Brownie’s incredible odyssey ended happily thanks to microchip technology. But how ever did the dog know to board the train that would ultimately lead home? Chalk that up to something a lot less scientific: canine instinct, or a dog’s built-in global “pawsitioning” system.
