advertised on the various lost pet sites, like PawBoost.
Posted on 08/12/2022 2:14:17 PM PDT by fwdude
I have a question on identity microchips which is pertinent to me and probably a lot of others.
When an animal is microchipped and registered in a national database, vets and others with a connected scanner can identify the registered owner of the scanned pet.
Let's say you lose your pet and then someone else finds it, unaware that it is a lost pet belonging to someone else. It has no collar or other identifying markings, but you had it microchipped and it is currently registered. If the new "owner" likes the pet and claims it for himself, and subsequently takes the pet to the vet for a checkup or medical procedures, is the vet obligated to scan the pet for a chip with or without the new claimant's permission? What if the new "owner" doesn't disclose the history of the pet (my vet never has asked about any I have brought in.)? The presumption seems to be that the claimed owner IS the owner, so there would be no impetus to scan the pet for a chip.
I have lost a couple of cats and people around me have lost cats, and have advertised on the various lost pet sites, like PawBoost. I just want to know if vets or other pet service providers routinely scan pets for microchips.
Let's now say that a vet does scan the pet, perhaps because a new chip was requested by the new "owner," and discovers the old chip, the one I had placed in the pet. Is the vet obligated to notify the recording organization that the pet has been found, or just to tell the new claimant about the finding?
I can see lot's of room for this to get very messy.
Doc?
Not from what I read...
You’re assuming it’s the prior owner. Dog could have changed hands 5 times.
Not sure I understand, but I don’t think that’s true if a person admits they found the animal and wants to determine whether the owner can be found.
What sense would there be in chipping, otherwise?
All our dogs have been chipped since 2002. The vets we have used all have the ability to scan for the chip. If you lost a pet and they were picked up by animal control or dropped at a rescue, they would scan. Not sure what a vet would do if someone brought in a pet that decided to keep. I have thought about that possibility if we lost one of Golden Retrievers. They have all been AKC and are great dogs. I’m going to ask out vet next time we bring one of the kids in if they routinely scan new “clients”.
Could be.
My dog was; the chip was read by several different vets and showed her to belong to me as well as her shot record.
Not the vets job....Take it to the pound....
My vet always wands any new dogs we’ve had.
The only pet we had chipped was our Corgi. Died from cluster seizures from brain tumors.
I’d never do it again.
This article from ‘Veterinary Practice News’ doesn’t exactly answer the question, but discusses aspects of it:
Most local animal control officers carry scanners and their home office has even better ones.
I rescued a poor stray, older dog, recently during some cold wet rain.
The animal control officer ran his wand over the poor critter after we got him into a cage box on the truck.
The officer knew that the poor critter had a scan/microchip. His scan didn’t let us know the dog’s owner, tele and home address.
At the office, they located the dog’s masters via a better chip reader. The owners picked up the dog in less than a hour.
The officer said if I hadn’t put towels around the lost dog and called animal control, the dog would not have recovered. It was cold and damp that morning.
We still have no idea. How a blind dog could end up about a mile away from its home and not be killed by traffic. He crossed at least 3 busy roads.
vets routinely scanning animals that are brought to them for care
In today’s day and age, standard of care for any animals includes recording any and all permanent identification, including microchips, tattoos, brands, eartags, especially for any animal presented for a health certificate (OCVI- Official Certificate of Veterinary Inspection). As a Standard of Practice, veterinary clinics should scan any new patients and add information to a permanent health record. Horsedogcatcowchicken, etc.
If a microchip is found, due diligence is to discover the registry and correct owner. Discovery of lost or missing animals, theft, and abuse is an added benefit.
I think it’s for locally lost animals and that the only people who regularly check them is animal control and maybe other animal shelters.
If your dog keeps running away, there is a good chance that your dog doesn’t like you....
For OFA tests they do.
The value of many purebreed dogs exceeds the California minimum to be considered grand theft. A neighbor and his adult daughter raise great danes. They have a waiting list of buyers for their puppies.
I HATE being bipolar! It’s awesome!
I’m not a vet, but help operate a no-kill shelter. We scan cats and dogs of unknown provenance, and occasionally find a chip. We also look for spay-neuter tattoos, which can clue us in to where an animal was fixed, which can lead to the SN vet remembering the animal. Tracking down an owner from chip data is more trouble than you might think. Some companies are defunct. Often the owner data is obsolete.
Often the pets have been passed along to new owners (or variously abandoned, surrendered to shelters, etc.) Every now and then the research, calls, etc. pay off and a bereft owner is reunited with their pet. The process can also drag you into domestic disputes and ethical issues.
The point here is that it often takes more than a quick scan and a phone call. Shelters aren’t legally required to make more than a cursory effort to find owners of strays, but doing this sort of thing is part of our mission.
Vets generally are in the making money business (that’s not a criticism), not the spending time finding owners business. They will perform scans and do searches if a client or shelter asks them to, but I doubt many do this on every animal hoping to find some trouble.
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