somerville dog: a weblog

Chigger, at blogdogs.com, offers sound advice to dogs regarding identity theft and protecting your identity.

Blogdogs.com offers a dog's-eye view on the internet. Though infrequently updated, it is funny. Fall-off-the-couch roll-on-the-floor funny.

Seriously, though. Permanent positive identification can mean the difference between finding your dog and never finding your dog again if he ever gets lost.

Collar tags are good: Somerville dog owners are subject to state laws requiring that dogs wear tags indicating that they are licensed by the City and that their rabies vaccinations are current (see Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 140: Section 137 Registration and licenses and Chapter 140: Section 145B Vaccination against rabies; certificate; tag; proof of vaccination; penalty). But tags and collars can, themselves, be lost (and stolen). If your dog is lost and is not wearing his collar and tags, chances are you will never see your dog again.

Dog owners have two options for permanently identifying their dogs: tattoos and microchips.¹ The American Kennel Club Companion Animal Recovery (AKC-CAR) program "provides 24-hour recovery services for microchipped and tattooed pets. The enrollment database is located in Raleigh, NC, but maintains records from around the world."

A tattoo is etched on the inside of the dogs thigh near his abdomen. The area is shaved to make application easier and less irritating to the skin, but it grows back and can obscure the number.²

Tattoos can be altered or removed by a determined dog thief, but the real problem with the tattoo is its permanence. What do you tattoo on your dog? Your phone number? What if you move?

There is no consistency in the identifying marks , which can include anything from a coded series of digits and letters officially assigned by a national tattoo registry, to a graphic symbol, to a phone number. . . . [P]eople move, or give their pets away, and a tattoo with a no longer valid phone number or address will probably not be helpful.³

AKC-CAR recommends that pet owners choose a unique, alphanumeric tattoo number.

The benefit of a microchip is that it is "encoded with a unique and unalterable identification number".⁴ You can change or add additional contact information by contacting the registry in which you enrolled your dog. In the early days of the microchip technology, a valid concern was that chips manufactured by different companies were not readable, and in some cases not recognizable, by all scanners. In 1996, however, a universal scanner was developed. Universal scanners have since been widely distributed to animal shelters.⁵

I have chosen to have my dog microchipped. Strummer was microchipped last month.

¹A website called Dognose ID claims that the nose print of a dog is, like a human thumbprint, a unique identifier. If nose printing were an effective method of permanent positive identification, it would certainly have the benefit of being non-invasive. However, the company claims that "the Canadian Thoroughbred Kennel Club, the equivalent of the American Kennel Club, or AKC, in the U.S., has accepted nose prints as proof of identity of dogs since 1938." The Canadian equivalent of the AKC is, in fact, the Canadian Kennel Club/Club Canin Canadien. The Canadian Kennel Club sponsors CANADACHIP, a national pet rescue program.

² Norma Bennett Woolf, "Microchips: Grain-sized microchip can be Fido's ticket home," Dog Owner's Guide.

³Ardeth Baxter, "Tracking your dog or cat: identification methods," PageWise, Inc.

⁴ Microchipping, AKC-CAR.

⁵ Banfield veterinary clinics, which operate out of Petsmart stores, introduced a new microchip in February 2004. Unlike the microchips of the leading manufacturers, Digital Angel Corporation, formerly Destron Fearing, (manufacturer of HomeAgain) and Avid Identification Systems Inc., which use a 125kHz frequency, Banfield uses a 134.2 kHz chip, the international standard. According to Sandra Eckstein, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,

Banfield stopped shipping out microchips this month and won't resume shipping until mid-July. During that time, it will distribute about 700 additional scanners. The chip manufacturer also will distribute 900 scanners, according to Alex Schrage, vice president of business development for Banfield. Those scanners . . . will detect both frequencies of microchips ("Banfield veterinary clinics to temporarily stop shipping microchips" ).