I read a couple of local shelters now in addition to fixing the pets and giving them their shots before you adopt the cats or dogs are also going to start putting in tracking devices in their dogs and cats.
Anyone have that? How does it work exactly?
I’m not sure if this is the same thing but both of my cats have implanted microchips at the back of their necks. These chips can be scanned with a handheld scanner (I’ve seen them do it at the vet) and the unique ID ties into a database. We paid a one-time fee to have the chips implanted and then sent our contact information to the company. I think this is the site http://public.homeagain.com/ Hopefully if our cats ever got out, whoever found them could take them to a shelter or vet with a scanner and get in touch with us.
ETA: We did this so that our indoor-only cats wouldn’t need to wear collars with contact info.
All of the shelters and veterinarians in Chicago have been implanting microchips for at least the last 10 years. A small chip encased in a non-reactive coating (the size of a grain of rice) is implanted under the skin between the shoulder blades. This chip has a unique number that reflects back to the scanning device which then displays the microchip number and the company that made it.
The vet or shelter then calls the manufacturer with the chip number and gets the owner’s information for returning the pet home.
The microchipping business has boomed over the last few years and the pioneering companies couldn’t be left alone by others that wanted to compete. The market is saturated now by different manufacturers that use different frequencies that not all of the scanners can read. Make sure if you decide to get your pet chipped, you get a more “popular” and more established type such as Home Again or AVID. If you get a newer company’s chip, if your pet gets lost and scanned, the place that does the scanning might not have one that will pick up the frequency and they might not realize there’s really a chip there unless they take an x-ray.
I think the companies have all recognized the problem and are working on a more universal system. They all want people’s pets to get home when lost.
Could the microchip be used for other things.
Like lets say when your cat or dog has rabies vaccinations the chip is updated. Of course that probably wouldn’t be cost effective. I guess as long as they find the owner they could ask the owner if the animal was vaccinated
Still it is fascinating to think about what could be done
Our cats are microchipped (they had to be in order to make the move from Egypt to Indonesia via a quarantine stay in Singapore) but they have no “tracking device,” as in an implant that transmits a locator signal. How big would something like that be, anyway?
All three cats of mine are microchipped. A tracking device would be great. When Jet Jaguar got last a year or so ago I was very depressed. He found his way home but for two weeks I looked for him and I was really upset thinking I’d lost my little buddy. If I had a way to locate him it would have been great and saved a lot of worry and sadness. I can only say it was obvious he was happy to be back.
plus unless he learns how to talk I’ll never know what happened to him! he was skinny and dirty when he came back and I don’t know where he went or what he did and I’ll never find out!
They automatically chip all animals that go through the LA shelters, so yes.
It’s not so much a ‘tracking device’ as something that can be a positive ID for a found animal. It’s somewhere around the size of a grain of rice and goes under the skin around the back of the neck.
Our pound-acquired cats were chipped there. Their tags say “microchipped” to alert anyone who finds them that they can be traced.
I guess they perform a CAT scan.
All three of my cats are microchipped. It’s not very expensive at all, and it provides me with peace of mind. I’m sure that the cats weren’t thrilled with the procedure, but we didn’t ask them.
One of the few progressive things they did when I lived in El Paso was to require all dogs and cats to be micro-chipped. It’s just like an injection, like others said, in the loose skin at the nape of the neck.
All 7 of my dogs are chipped, but in no way those are tracking devices. I would imagine a GPS would require a regular change of batteries and implanting those might not be too practical.
Also, chips are not really updated with medical info. The chip contains a number and that number is in a large database that everyone can have access to, so the chip is read if your animal is lost and the database is scanned for their number to determine who the owners are.
If the info kept in the database is up to date the animal can be returned to you.
My dog has a chip, but a friend sent me this url recently. It’s a pure-tracking device, but really it’s only useful if your dog has wandered off. It wouldn’t really stand up to dognappers who would just be able to take off the collar. I’m more worried about dognappers than runaways anyway. Why do you ask Markxxx?
I was just thinking of the “Big Brother” aspect of it all.
After Jolly Roger’s post though, it’d be kind of cool to be able to put a GPS in your cat and watch where he goes on our computer. When I was a kid every sunset the cat would be let out and she ran into the bushes and stayed till the last person called her in (Usually around midnight). I always wondered what she did.
LOL
There is no real big brother aspect to it. The chip is simply an RFID chip - completely passive, and only responds to a request when a transmitter is passed over it. Similarly to the automated toll collections (fast lane, ez pass, what-have-you).
Since all the chip responds with is a number, it is completely meaningless without the database that correlates the ID number to the owner and their contact info. So no medical information can be loaded onto it (well, perhaps technically its possible to add information to an RFID chip - but it wouldn’t be done in this case).
I’m not at all sure a tracking device would work with cats.
Most of them are highly trained in advanced counter-surveillance techniques. Also, they’ve got the ability to falsify a signal to a GPS unit. There’s simply no point in checking your cat’s whereabouts on a computer screen. If its location shows ‘in garden tree, second branch up’ the beast is probably upstairs under a bed, giving itself a refresher course on how to avoid detection by the latest technological devices.
No pics - cat currently unavailable for photo shoot.
I inserted a whistle in my dogs butt. Now when ever he runs away, I can hear him whistling for me. As a bonus you can hear him poot before you smell it.
Any developments in the last three years on these microchips? Has a more universal system been developed, as SeaDragonTattoo mentioned?
Our Bert has a chip.
Funny story about dummy me: I once thought a chip implant meant that if your pet ever got lost, you’d be able to find him again using GPS technology.
Great idea though, huh? 
Quasi
In our municipality because the dogs are chipped we get to buy a one time license that is good for their lifetime instead of renewing every year. In addition to the database updated by the microchip company animal control keeps their own list of licensed dogs and their contact information so they don’t even have to make a call, the scan with their portable device and it updates from their database. Licensed animals can frequently be returned home without ever hitting the pound. They get loaded into the truck and driven straight home.
I discovered all of this last year when my cranky old neighbor kept sneaking up my driveway and opening the back gate to let the dogs out into the street. I now have a keyed lock on the back gate because he would open the child proof latch and the sliding bolt to let them out.