Warning: "Pet Flipping" on the rise

A friend of ours on twitter brought to our attention a news story from a local TV station warning about a new scam - pet flipping - that targets dog lovers.

What it is

Say you find a lost dog wandering your neighborhood. As a good citizen, what do you do?

Clyde the bulldog. Photo: public domain.

Take photos, and then hang flyers in the neighborhood, at the local market, even perhaps in the lost and found section of your local paper or on craigslist.

You get a call from someone, and they sound both frantic and relieved at the same time: "omigosh, you found my dog! We've been worried sick!"

You meet with the person who gratefully takes said pup off your hands and you feel this warm glow because you've helped reunite a family member.

But then you happen to be cruising through craigslist the next day and you see a photo of the dog you rescued up for sale. You - and the pet's real owner - have just fallen victim to the current new scam: pet flipping.

What you can do

Sometimes even the most meticulous pet owner can lose a pet. It might be a pet sitter who accidentally leaves a door ajar, or a secure fence that develops weaknesses your pup can exploit. Regardless, you can't assume that your indoor pet will remain indoors every moment of their life. And how many of you own pets that you believe are secretly related to Houdini, please raise your hands?

Houdini? Who, me? *innocent look*

Then there are natural disasters such as flood, fire, or tornado.

And yes, this can happen to you.

When we were so personally involved in the fire that devoured Sebastian's home and the homes of 20 other families, two pets were lost.

One, to our knowledge, was never recovered. The other one was found, and restored to  his grateful owners, but only because of one little detail: he was microchipped.



Microchips save lives & reunite families

Here are a few facts you may not have known about lost pets, courtesy of Found Animals. And please take special note of how a microchip can improve your chances of reuniting with your cat:

The Good News

An increasing number of shelters are microchipping all animals adopted out. And awareness of the benefits of microchipping your pet is increasing among pet owners.

The Bad News

According to studies published in the Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA), over 40% of pets that are implanted with microchips cannot be found in a pet registry database anywhere.

What you need to do

Is your pet microchipped? Great! If not, I urge you to please consider doing so at your earliest convenience.  But more importantly, have you registered your microchipped loved one in a registry?
We have. Our three are registered with Petlink, the company associated with our microchip manufacturer. However, we recently received an email from FoundAnimals about a free national microchip registry here in the US.

Regardless of your microchip's manufacture - and regardless of whether or not you're in another registry already - you can enter your information into Found Animal's Microchip registry for free.

According to their website,

"The Found Animals Microchip Registry is a free, nonprofit service dedicated to reuniting lost pets with their families. By registering your pet's microchip number in the Found Animals Microchip Registry, if your pet is ever lost and picked up by a humane organization or individual, you will be contacted via phone, email, and text with information on where your pet can be found.

"There is no coest to use the Found Animals Microchip Registry. You can register any brand of microchip, add pets, and update your information for free online 24/7."

Why registries are important

Did you know? A microchip does not store your pet's information. It simply sends a number to a microchip reader when the reader activates it (the microchip remains completely dormant all other times).

An owner must go online and fill in the information - name, address, contact info, veterinarian, medical issues, etc - or the implanted microchip is, in essence, useless.

So please... Microchip. Register. And update your information regularly.
And please encourage friends and family to do the same.

Monday Medical Issues: Microchips, part 2

Last week, we discussed the risks and benefits of microchipping your pet. This week, we'll look at how the microchip works, as well as other reasons the microchip is worth considering that you might not have thought of.

Science Stuff and
More Myth Busting

A microchip puts out an RF (radio frequency) signal that can be picked up by a scanner. There are 3 different frequencies used by companies that manufacture pet microchips in the U.S.:

Photo Wiki Commons, courtesy Helene Gisin.
Licensed under Creative Commons Share Alike 3.0

125-kHz microchips:
24PetWatch® (unencrypted)
FriendChip®, Avid (encrypted)
HomeAgain®/Digital Angel (unencrypted)

128-kHz microchips:
AKC Companion Animal Recovery®
(AKC CAR®)

134.2-kHz microchips:
Bayer ResQ®
HomeAgain®/Digital Angel

The reason I listed all that geeky kHz stuff above is because there's a myth involved here that we're about to bust. The myth is, "OMG, my cat's got the 134 kHz chip and she's going to get euthanized if she runs away and gets picked up by a shelter that only scans for 125 kHz chips!!"

Not true.

Although individual brands of microchips are designed to work best at their specific frequency, they have quite good readability on other frequencies as well. This is confirmed in FCC government filings which show that scanners marketed as "multi-frequency" are really only single frequency scanners. (see source links at bottom of post)

a kHz sine wave

The second myth to bust is the one about radio frequencies causing cancer. First off, your pet is not walking around broadcasting a signal at all times. in fact, it's the scanner itself that sends out a pulse that "excites" the microchip into giving off a sympathetic response.

(Not that kind of excitement, Cathy Keisha. Just sayin'.)

Second, the signal the scanner provokes the microchip into sending out is orders of magnitude less than that cell phone you hold to your ear on a daily basis. Microchips operate in the kilohertz range; your cell phone emits in the gigahertz range. (And no we're not even getting into the cell phone topic here, LOL!)

Other really good reasons to microchip

Probably the most compelling argument I've ever seen for microchipping your pet occurred this past February -- when I watched the apartment complex where Amy and Kathi lived (Sebastian the Sensitive Soul and CJ's Paw Pad) go up in flames.

As those of you who have followed our blog for some time know, twenty apartments were destroyed in that fire.  A fire that was so bad, the fire inspector told Amy, that "the building was lost before we even arrived."

Police were racing against time to save lives. They were going around kicking doors in. Animals raced out, some never to be found again. One cat, though, was microchipped. His owners were not home at the time of the fire. They lost everything they owned -- except their cat, who was returned to them days later.

In an emergency like a fire or a natural disaster such as the Joplin tornado -- the first anniversary of which we'll be commemorating next week -- your pet can be separated from you in the blink of an eye. A microchip might be the only way they find their way back to you.

Worth it? You bet.

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source:  U.S. FCC database search form

(Submit the form with "Grantee Code" and "Product Code" for each individual scanner; for the new universal Digital Angel/HomeAgain Scanner, still operating at 125 kHz (0.125 megahertz) codes "C5S" and "HS9250L"; for a recent AVID scanner, operating at 134.2 kHz (0.1342 megahertz), codes "IOL" and "-134-AV1034I" .)

Monday Medical Issues: Microchipping

Since May is Microchip Your Pet Month, we thought it would be a good topic for a Monday Medical Issues post.

Microchipping is growing in popularity, with an increasing number of animal shelters offering it as a free service to all animals upon adoption.

But what are the statistics surrounding microchipping?

What are the risks? What are the benefits? And - most important - do the benefits outweigh the risks?

photo: Adobe Veterinary Center

Microchipping your pet involves embedding a rice-sized pellet between your dog or cat's shoulder blades just below the back of the neck. (On other animals the location may vary, and in Continental Europe, the practice is to locate the microchip in the left side of the neck).

No anesthesia is required, though I have to admit, I requested it be done while Faraday was anesthetized during his teeth cleaning after I saw Allie cry out when she was injected - those needles are just a teensy bit bigger than standard!

This pellet contains a tracking number that is maintained in a database. That database contains owner information and, depending on the database, can also contain veterinarian info and even medical records.

When an animal is found, one of the first things a veterinarian or animal shelter does is to scan the animal for a microchip.

Microchip Myths, Facts
and Scientific Stuff

One of the stories circulating around microchips is that they cause cancer. That fear may be related to the fact that some vaccination injection sites have proven to cause cancer in some animals, particularly cats. (this will be the topic of a future Monday Medical Issues post). Here's what the research tells us: the British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA) maintains a database on the adverse reactions of microchips on animals. At the time the study was posted, only 391 animals out of 4 million were reported experiencing an adverse reaction. That's 0.00010%, or 1 out of every 10,000 animals microchipped.

And the majority of those issues involved the migration of the microchip, not cancer. Two of those cases recorded were dogs who had developed cancer at the site, but one of them, according to the BSAVA study, may have been caused by something else.

In comparison, you're about 4 times more likely to die in an auto accident than your pet is to have any kind of adverse reaction at all, and 4 times more likely to be struck by lightning than your pet is to get cancer from a microchip.

As a result, the American Veterinary Medical Association has deemed microchipping to be worth the risk. 

Picture Source: ainhoap and Animal Photos!

Why? Let's talk about the benefits for a few minutes. 

A study of almost 8,000 stray animals at animal shelters concluded that dogs who were not microchipped were only reunited with their owners about 22% of the time.

Dogs who were microchipped were reunited over 52% of the time. 


That more than doubled your pup's chance of finding you should you become separated. 

And the odds for cats exponentially increase. A non-chipped cat has less than a 2% chance of being reunited with his owner. But microchipped cats went back to their families almost 40% of the time.
We're all for increasing the odds of any lost pet being rehomed, so we give microchips four paws up.


Next week:  

The science behind how microchips work 

and other reasons for microchipping you 

might not have considered





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sources:  Lord, et al, "Journal of American Veterinary Medicine Association", July 15, 2009