Transcript
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Anyone who's ever lost a pet knows the agony and the worry about where they are, whether they're hungry, whether they're hurt and, probably the biggest question, whether you're ever going to see them again.
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Well, on today's episode of Starlight Pet Talk, we're going to talk about one simple thing that you can do that will greatly increase the odds that, if your pet goes missing, that you will see them again.
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So stay tuned.
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You're listening to Starlight Pet Talk, a podcast for pet parents who want the best pet care advice from cat experts, dog trainers, veterinarians and other top pet professionals who will help you live your very best life with your pets.
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We also share inspiring rescue and adoption stories from people who've taken their love of pets to the next level by getting involved in animal welfare.
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My name is Amy Castro and I'm the founder and president of Starlight Outreach and Rescue and a columnist for Pet Age Magazine.
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I've rescued thousands of animals and helped people just like you find the right pet for their family.
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My mission is to help pet parents learn all the ways that they can care for, live with and even have fun with their pets so they can live their very best lives and their pets can too.
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Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk.
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I'm your host, amy Castro, and my guest today.
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Dr Matt Goetz is the senior professional services veterinarian to Merck Animal Health.
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They're the makers of the Home Again microchip as well as many other great products that enhance the lives of our pets, and Dr Matt works really closely with organizations around the country to help them make a positive impact on has also served as a medical director for an animal shelter in Phoenix, Arizona in their community.
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But what I like most about him is that he has seen the life-saving impact of microchips for pets firsthand and I'm sure the frustration that I and a lot of our colleagues in rescue and sheltering have faced when you find an animal that doesn't have a microchip and you desperately want to get them back to their family and you just struggle.
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So, Dr Matt, thank you so much for being on Starlight Pet Talk today.
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Thank you for having me.
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I've been looking forward to doing this.
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Yeah, this is one I've been looking forward to as well, because, like I said, I've been doing this for over probably 13, 14 years now, and there's nothing more exciting than running that scanner over an animal and having it go and then actually being able to read and reunite the animal with the owner.
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But I also wanted to educate pet parents, because a lot of people have some misconceptions about what the microchip is, what it can and cannot do and the impact of the microchip.
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So, if you don't mind, can you start off, not at a hugely technological level, but just give us a ballpark idea of what exactly is the microchip and how does it work.
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Yeah, I'd be happy to do that.
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So the microchip itself is about 12 millimeters, so it's pretty small.
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It's a standard size microchip, so about the size of a piece of rice.
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As I tell people, what we do with that is as veterinarians, is we'll actually implant that under your dog's skin and for the most part it generally goes between the shoulder blades.
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But it's actually kind of there's no battery to it, it's inactive, so there's no need to replace it or moving parts or anything like that.
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And then in terms of what we get from that is there is a personal kind of identification number on that microchip.
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So let's say, your animal's lost or goes missing and then somebody takes our scanners or our scanner and scans that animal.
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What we would show up is that personal identification number and usually the number the manufacturer to call.
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That's generally how a microchip, the size of it and how it works.
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Obviously we'll get into a little bit more detail, but overall that's kind of.
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What we're looking at is kind of that small grain of rice just going under the skin and that's going to give your pet lifetime identification.
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And I know we stress the importance of it.
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But I'm just curious to hear from your perspective why do you think microchipping pets is a critical thing in today's world?
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Yeah, I mean I think for so many reasons and me personally I've had my own pets go missing that have had to be scanned and get it back to me.
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So the value of it is something that, as a personal person going through it, I can't overemphasize the value of that microchip.
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But all of us were kind of we move or hey, we're walking our dog one day and we're all good pet parents, as I always tell people.
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So this ends up first saying, hey, you're a bad pet parent, but this is for the times that we don't think of.
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So I'm taking my dog for a walk and it gets spooked and it slips his leash and he runs away.
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So now he's got no leash on, no tags, no identification, no call or nothing like that.
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And, oh my gosh, how are we going to get back in contact with our animal?
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Well, having that microchip there, if the animal is picked up by you know good Samaritan, taken to a veterinarian, or picked up by animal control, and they scan that animal and they find that microchip, then they can contact you and get you back in connection with your animal and happily ever after.
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Yeah, we hear from a lot of people who will say, well, my dog's got a collar and a tag, but, like you said, they slip out.
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Actually, I just did a favorite products episode and I was talking about a thing that I love which is a martingale collar, because too many times people who have their collars too loose or, like my dog, has a big fat bulldog neck and she does have a big fat head, but the big fat head is just that much smaller than her neck that no regular collar can be tight enough without choking her to not go over her head Should she try to pull away or just sit down and decide she doesn't want to move anymore.
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So, yeah, having a collar and tags is awesome, but if it's hanging at the end of your leash and your dog is a mile away, it's not doing you any good.
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I know I also see a lot when I see posts for lost pets and I've probably seen it a hundred times he wasn't wearing his collar because he just got a bath, put him outside to dry off, shake off or whatever, or they bathed him outside or her, and the next thing you know it's gone and it has no identification.
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So you're so close yet so far.
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At that point, is there anything statistically or just from your opinion?
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How much does it increase the odds that I'm going to get my pet back if the pet is microchipped?
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Yeah, I think it's going to greatly increase the odds.
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So if you think about it most likely if your dog or cat were again to be picked up by a good Samaritan and taken to a veterinarian and they scan it or animal control the fact that we have that personal identifier that can then track back to you and we can reunite you, that already increases the odds substantially versus having no identification, makes it almost zero that we may reunite you with your dog.
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But having that really greatly increases the chance.
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And from a home again perspective, we actually get a phone call about every six minutes in terms of a pet owner saying Fluffy got out or Max ran away or something like that.
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And so we get a phone call about every six minutes to report a pet loss and then we've actually reunited more than three million pets with their owners.
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So we have a great terms of statistics reuniting those animals.
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Three million is, I mean, that's a lot of animals and there's about 10 million animals in our database alone.
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So a lot of animals out there have microchips.
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So a lot of people see the value in microchipping the pet.
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Yeah, another common thing I see on Facebook and other places where people have lost a pet, or I'll even have owners tell me do I really need that?
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Because my cat's an indoor cat.
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It's like, yeah, until somebody leaves the door open and none of my cats wear collars.
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Maybe I'm a horrible person, but I just have never put collars on my cats.
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They are all microchipped and I can't tell you the amount of times that one in particular has ended up in the yard.
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Or I had a cat that was gone for 10 days right before Christmas because the last person who went out the door after that Christmas party didn't shut the door all the way and I woke up about one in the morning and freezing my butt off because the back door was wide open and Bandit was gone.
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And the feeling of knowing that number one that was my fault, you know and not being able to find him for 10 days and the signs and the searching, the neighborhood and the worry and wonder about what's happening to him is just.
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I don't wish that on anybody for their pet.
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And he could have been found and had that microchip scans sooner.
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It would have saved us a lot of heartache and thank God he did come back.
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But too many pets don't find their way back because as somebody that rescues them I can very often tell, like there's sometimes it's so obvious that a pet is owned but we have no way to track back the owner because there's no tag, there's no microchip, you know, I don't see any signs anywhere and people don't necessarily know what to do to get their pet back.
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So it's sad because you know somebody's hurting really badly when that pet is missing.
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Yep, yep, I have nothing as great more panic in me.
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My wife accused me being a helicopter parent with our cats and when they have gotten loose, it's that sinking feeling.
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So I've been there with you, so having somebody to reach out to, especially I love the fact that you can call somebody home again, versus just an email or web form, and be like, hey, fluffy got loose, and that help you kind of through that in terms of just that sinking feeling that we all get when we've lost a pet.
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Yeah, it actually even just happened to me the other day too.
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I have this little.
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We brought in this little like a 10 pound, very genetically messed up looking little French bulldog, and nobody had gone out.
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But the dog disappeared and I was freaking out.
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I got in my car I'm driving up down the street because we had literally just gotten her.
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She had no color on no microchip, she had mange, and so we hadn't really done much to her yet.
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And I was on the phone with animal control saying, hey, if you happen to get this animal picked up, and then I heard this strange snorting noise coming from underneath the recliner and she was in this.
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It has a slip cover on it and she was like in the hammock that she'd made of the slip cover.
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And it's like I mean I was dying and I was panicking about this dog missing, and so it's just again.
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It's just a terrible feeling.
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One of the things that I used to run into when I was volunteering at an animal control facility where we routinely microchipped the animals before adoption, is that there were a lot of misconceptions or maybe concerns that people had about microchips Everything from can a microchip give my pet cancer to.
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I remember one lady in particular that was really concerned about whether that microchip was like a tracking device that everybody would have all her information.
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Can you talk to some of the misconceptions that you have heard and share the truth?
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Yeah, yeah, and that's something I've heard, those similar concerns.
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So I think in terms of, oh my gosh, I'm gonna, it's gonna cause cancer in my dog or something like that.
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And microchips are extremely, extremely safe.
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So they're hermetically sealed.
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So what that means is, hey, when we implant them, they're not going to react with your dog's body, so they're not going to react to fluids in your dog's body or cat or the fat or anything like that.
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So they're very, very safe.
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If they weren't safe, I wouldn't put them in my own pet.
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So that's what I always tell pet owners is every animal I've had has always been microchipped, so they're very safe.
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And then some of those other kind of misconceptions that, yeah, in terms of is this gonna, is this gonna be tracking me, or is this going to be, you know, listening in on me, or things like that Nope, there's, there's no GPS tracker in those microchips.
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There's no microphone in those microchips.
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There's no way we can actually look, you know, on a computer or a cell phone and see you know you or your dog moving or anything like that.
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So nope, there's no GPS.
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I think some of the other misconceptions are we're all concerned about privacy nowadays.
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That's been a big point of discussion, I think, around microchips too.
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Is my information going to be in that microchip and is is that person going to scan that microchip and be able to know my name and my date of birth and where I live?
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Nope, that none of that information is available.
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So the only thing when we scan a microchip is the number and then also usually the, the manufacturer 800 number, and then certain microchips also have basically temperature sensing technology.
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So very, there's a little bit of data that we get off of there, but nothing that's going to expose your personal information.
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So from a privacy standpoint it's very, very safe as well.
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And one thing I want to feel free to add on or correct if I am incorrect in stating this, but one of the things, because I was one of the people that did a lot of the calling.
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And we do it at the rescue.
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You know, we've got scanners, we scan, we get a number, we call the microchip company and they have the contact information for the owner.
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But the owner has the ability to to say you can share this information or you can't.
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So there are sometimes when I've called and they were and they will provide me, not just some random person off the street but somebody who is representing an actual rescue.
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They verify that we're a real rescue.
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They get our phone number and our name and all of that and you know then they'll provide us the contact information.
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But I have called and we use home again chips.
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We happen to do to use home again chips and you know it'll say you know the owner.
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I can't remember the verbiage that they use, but basically the owner has opted not to have their information shared, so home again actually does the contacting and then has the owner get back in touch with us.
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Is that accurate to state it that way?
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Yeah.
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So, in terms that you basically hit the nail on the head in terms of, yeah, we're very, very protective of that personal information.
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And so, yep, they, if I was a veterinarian, I call and say, hey, this is the number I found.
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And home again we'll say, great, we will contact that owner and then we'll kind of work on that reunification from there.
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But they, they are very, very careful to disclose any information because, again, we are we're very aware of how sensitive privacy issues are nowadays.
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We want to keep everybody's information as private as possible.
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Definitely.
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As far as microchips, I mean, obviously home again is not the only microchip company and I will say that we have used other ones.
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I know one of the frustrations that I've run into in trying to.
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You know you scan an animal, you get a number and if it's not a major company like home again, sometimes it can be super tricky to even get a hold of or to even find out what company it is.
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No-transcript, you know we'll go online to the I think it's American Animal Hospital Association that does the website where you can put in the number, and it's occasionally come back with this.
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It could be any number of these companies and then you start calling them like nope, it's not ours, nope, it's not ours.
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So that's leading me to the question of you know why is it so important to pick a quality or a good or a reputable I don't know what word I want to use microchip and the company itself, when you have that option to do that for your pet?
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Yeah, you know, and I think that's a very important distinction there, because there are many things that that home again, as I say, brings to the table for your pet.
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So we have been in business a very long time, so we have a long history, so it's not like we're going to be bought and sold and bought and sold.
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Some of the smaller companies are kind of, you know, bought and sold pretty regularly, so we have a long history.
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We have what we call our advanced loss pet recovery service.
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So basically that's our calling center.
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So, hey, you can call us, you can email us, you can send us a form.
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Whatever communication works for you.
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And I know some of us have no problem picking up the phone and calling.
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Some of us would love to do everything by text message.
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So there's all these kind of different ways, you know, in terms of reaching out to us.
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But that is very, very important in terms of especially, I believe, having that ability to call and talk to somebody, because I don't know about you, but when I've lost my pets in the past, I don't feel comfortable just sending an email or just filling out a form.
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I want to know that somebody got that information and they are immediately trying to get it Exactly, and they're because we all know time is of the essence and I want to know that somebody has an information that's been recorded in the system, everything like that, versus just sending an email or again hoping that, hoping that somebody gets back to me, or even that email didn't get lost in cyberspace.
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There's always that potential out there in terms of stuff getting lost in the shuffle.
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So having a well staffed resources behind the microchip is just as important as the microchip itself, and I don't think a lot of people realize that.
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But having that again, having that well staffed group of people, really makes the chances of being reunited with your pet even higher.
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Yeah, and that's why I think it's important that people because we've had people our home again chips are, you know it's rolled into the adoption fee and our adoption fees are quite low.
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But I also do in my professional pay job.
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I do consulting with veterinarians and sometimes people will complain or will do like a clinic and it's like you want me to pay this amount, you know $25, it's like that and people will complain about the price.
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But you know it kind of goes back to the old adage in many instances that you get what you pay for.
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At least I think.
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If somebody didn't know, like maybe and we're going to talk about how people can know where their chip came from and that kind of thing but is there some type of global database where microchips get registered so that if I had the number for my microchip but I didn't remember you know what company it came from, or I couldn't get a hold of somebody because maybe it's not a 24 seven operation like you are.
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Is there somewhere I can go out to say, hey, my pet is lost?
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Yeah, so in terms of being able to try to figure those things out, there's not a, you know, international or national database of everything where you can get all that information.
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You know, like that per se.
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But as you were kind of talking earlier, so ah-ha.
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So the American Animal Hospital Association.
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So, ah-ha.
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If you were to Google ah-ha microchip lookup, you can go to their website and if you have the microchip number of your pet, you can put that information in there and you put in the microchip number.
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Again, it's not going to say who the chip is registered to in terms of your personal information, but what it will hopefully tell you is hey, this microchip is registered to Home Again.
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Here is Home Again's contact information, here is their website information, all those things.
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And this chip was last registered on January of 2023 or January 31st of 2023.
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So I actually tend to use that database a lot.
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I do a lot of outreach clinics, so kind of like free outreach clinics, and I have a lot of people that their address may not be a stable address or they may kind of be in between homes, things like that, but they come to get services and they want to know, hey, does my dog have a microchip and can you tell me the number and things like that.
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So I actually use that website pretty frequently to figure out what their microchip number is, say, hey, this is the person you need to call to make sure what information is in there, all those things, and I think that gives people peace of mind to know exactly what that microchip number is, who their company is, who they need to call, all those different things.
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And it's easily found for pet owners, usually through the All Hall website.
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Yeah, that's good for people to know for sure.
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You know some organizations will wait until the animal goes to be spayed or neutered and do the microchip.
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Then we don't do that here because that animal that we might adopt out if I adopt out, let's say, a 10 week old kitten that animal's not going to get neutered until around five months or so and that's a long time to go without a microchip.
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So we microchip right here and I know a lot of times people have expressed concern about you know, oh, is it going to hurt my pet?
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Or they don't want to look when we're doing it.
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And I'll be perfectly honest Sometimes I have microchipped little kittens and it's like nothing happened to them.
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I happened to be pretty quick and pretty fast at it.
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And then there have been other animals where you barely start touching them and they're acting like they're being murdered.
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We have some melodramatic animals.
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So does it actually really hurt the pet or is it really just kind of maybe a personality of the pet if they have a bad reaction?
00:19:46.667 --> 00:19:49.667
Because sometimes people get a little concerned about that.
00:19:50.349 --> 00:19:58.028
Yeah, and that's definitely a good question, because I do think, yep, you know, you think, oh my gosh needle going into pet, it's going to hurt and things like that.
00:19:58.028 --> 00:20:08.604
And I think it's like you and I, when we go get a vaccine or something like that, when we get injection it does have just that little kind of pin prick for just a second when we're getting that injection.
00:20:08.604 --> 00:20:12.849
Same when we're giving a microchip there is just a little bit of pop through the skin.
00:20:12.849 --> 00:20:14.987
But there's some ways we can kind of address that.
00:20:14.987 --> 00:20:20.593
So if I, when I was a shelter veterinarian, I microchipped most of the pets on intake.
00:20:20.593 --> 00:20:25.826
There was a few that I would microchip at the time of surgery, just that they were really rambunctious or things like that.
00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:34.285
But then if I did my public facing events, I actually used what we call the mini chips and they're actually a little bit smaller and the pet seems to not be as reactive.
00:20:34.285 --> 00:20:49.768
Because I'm in Arizona, as I tell people, I live in the land of Chihuahua's and I see a lot of Chihuahua's and I found that sometimes using those mini chip they don't necessarily hurt the pet, they're less or anything like that, but I do think it doesn't cause quite the reaction, and then the pet owner has a better experience with it.
00:20:49.768 --> 00:20:51.826
So, and the pet has a better experience too.
00:20:51.826 --> 00:21:01.164
So I think sometimes there are different ways we can go with that, depending on your pet, on yourself, or if you are a rescue organization, or if you're listening to this and you're doing some outreach work.
00:21:01.164 --> 00:21:04.189
I think sometimes using those mini chips also works really well.
00:21:05.502 --> 00:21:06.787
Yeah, that's definitely good to know.
00:21:06.787 --> 00:21:15.310
It's always that concern that to have that reaction in front of the pet owner and then they think, oh, you've done something wrong or you know, my pets hurt now because of it.
00:21:15.310 --> 00:21:23.410
So the microchips you know you were talking about how safe they are from the standpoint of being enclosed and not reacting with the animal's body.
00:21:23.410 --> 00:21:26.229
So once they get in there, do they work forever?
00:21:26.229 --> 00:21:27.282
Can they fail?
00:21:27.282 --> 00:21:29.826
Do they stay in place?
00:21:29.826 --> 00:21:41.165
Because that's one thing that I have run into with animals, especially older animals, where the microchips were done years ago, that I've scanned the body and not found it between the shoulder blades, I found it in the leg.
00:21:41.165 --> 00:21:42.665
What's the story there?
00:21:43.200 --> 00:21:45.208
Yeah, and we were talking kind of before the show.
00:21:45.208 --> 00:21:52.528
So my personally, my yellow lab had two microchips and the reason was, yep, she got her first microchip and I can't remember the name of the company.
00:21:52.528 --> 00:22:04.372
It was so long ago, but it went between the shoulder blades and then about a year later I had her at vet school and we were scanning our dogs or something like that, and I found that her microchip was down in her right leg and it migrated.
00:22:04.372 --> 00:22:10.766
So one thing I do really really like about the Holmigan microchips is we have this what we call our biobond technology.
00:22:10.766 --> 00:22:17.567
So when we place that microchip between the shoulder blades, like most of us usually do, it's going to stay there, which is great.
00:22:17.567 --> 00:22:18.449
It's not going to move.
00:22:18.449 --> 00:22:22.329
That is really really important, because most of the time, you know, it's going to move.
00:22:22.730 --> 00:22:29.154
Those of us that are going to scan animals yes, hopefully we're scanning head to tail and all the legs and everywhere in between, Just just to make sure.
00:22:29.154 --> 00:22:33.170
But sometimes you have somebody or you have a dog that's jumping around.
00:22:33.170 --> 00:22:45.105
It's hard to scan and we want it to be in between those shoulder blades so it's easy to scan there and pick up in terms of is it battery operators or moving parts to it or things like that.
00:22:45.105 --> 00:22:47.882
There's no actively moving parts to it.
00:22:47.882 --> 00:22:49.589
There's no batter to replace.
00:22:49.589 --> 00:22:53.509
You don't have to go back in six years later and change out a battery or something like that.
00:22:53.509 --> 00:22:54.776
It's good for life.
00:22:54.776 --> 00:23:00.346
The only thing that's going to activate that chip is when we take our scanner and we scan on the top of it.
00:23:00.346 --> 00:23:05.333
That's going to cause enough to activate that chip to get that Identification number off the chip again.
00:23:05.333 --> 00:23:09.080
But then that's all we're going to do and again, it's lifetime.
00:23:09.080 --> 00:23:10.223
No need to replace.
00:23:10.223 --> 00:23:15.730
No need to replace because of movement, because we got that strong biobond technology that's going to hold it in place.
00:23:16.531 --> 00:23:41.609
That's definitely good to know because, you're right, it does make it easier when you know, because that's always where you start is right between those shoulder blades, and it's like, if you don't find anything, then you start kind of going around and and it can be tricky with a wiggly pet or to, I mean, to be perfectly honest, when you've got an animal control facility that's bringing in dozens of animals in a day, it might, you know, it might become real easy to just do a quick scan and assume there's no chip and there might actually be one.
00:23:41.609 --> 00:23:45.269
So that's good to know that the technology is certainly getting better.
00:23:45.269 --> 00:23:57.769
From this standpoint, like as far as maybe a step-by-step or However you want to phrase it, if I discover my pet has gone missing, what are some things that I can do, other than my pet being microchip?
00:23:57.950 --> 00:24:12.190
But in that process of trying to find my pet, to increase the odds that I'm gonna get my pet back, yeah, there's some things that we can do, and this is like hey, we all have our smartphones nowadays, so, on my smartphone for all of my animals.
00:24:12.530 --> 00:24:20.560
I actually have a contact card for each one of my pets and it has a their picture, it has their microchip number and it has their basic information.
00:24:20.560 --> 00:24:35.840
You know Data, birth, things like that, you know any little kind of important little tidbits, and I actually always have that with me, obviously on my phone, and I think most of us nowadays we can't leave our smartphones sitting for more than five minutes, so we can use that to kind of our advantage and create those contact cards.
00:24:35.840 --> 00:24:43.476
So I think that is really helpful too, again, because if we were to our pet were to go missing, we would have that information, our fingertips.
00:24:43.476 --> 00:24:47.374
You know, hey, this is the home again number, this is my pets microchip.
00:24:47.374 --> 00:24:50.382
You know, this is a picture of my pet, all those different things.
00:24:50.382 --> 00:25:03.560
So then when we do call in to home again and we say, hey, this is the microchip, that's gonna make the process so much easier because, again, I don't know about you, but if we've talked about it, when you lose your pet, you have that moment of oh my gosh panic.
00:25:03.852 --> 00:25:05.018
I don't know the microchip number.
00:25:05.018 --> 00:25:06.244
I can't remember this.
00:25:06.244 --> 00:25:06.970
I can't remember that.
00:25:06.970 --> 00:25:15.000
It's all right there and that's why I create those contact cards for my own pets, because, just peace of mind, I'm ready to go if the unthinkable happens, type of thing.
00:25:16.050 --> 00:25:17.134
You know putting up.
00:25:17.134 --> 00:25:21.092
I always say and we have our, our home again Premium service.
00:25:21.092 --> 00:25:28.750
And this is kind of where the confusion is, where, hey, it doesn't, it doesn't cost any money ever To keep your information up to date with home again.
00:25:28.750 --> 00:25:38.082
So if you move, if you get a new cell phone number, if you get a new email address, all those things, that doesn't cost you any money at all to call in and update your information.
00:25:38.082 --> 00:25:45.602
The premium services there is a yearly fee associated with that, but part of that yearly fee that you get it's I think it's a very reasonable fee.
00:25:46.133 --> 00:25:48.470
You get something that's gonna actively help you look for your animals.
00:25:48.470 --> 00:25:52.630
So they're going to print up posters for you that say, hey, fluffy went missing.
00:25:52.630 --> 00:25:54.856
Here's a picture of fluffy and fluffy's information.
00:25:54.856 --> 00:26:05.278
You know they're going to hopefully, when Fluffy's found, if what, these lost a great distance and you know we're gonna help send fluffy home With up to a certain dollar money.
00:26:05.278 --> 00:26:09.230
So maybe we need to fly puppy to or fluffy back from another stage or something like that.
00:26:09.230 --> 00:26:19.390
So there's all kinds of other services that we offer through our premium services to help you get reunited with your pet, because at the end of the day we want all pets to be with their owners.
00:26:19.390 --> 00:26:22.761
We know, at the end of the day, that pets do their best with their owners.
00:26:22.761 --> 00:26:31.534
As, as much as I am a shelter veterinarian, I one of those people that, hey, if we didn't have to have shelters tomorrow and all pets were with their owners all the time, that'd be fantastic.
