Oh, where has my little dog gone?

Why doesn't the Lucas County dog warden scan for microchips?

by David Fine

published November 1st 2006

Today, you can have a microchip the size of a grain of rice implanted under the skin of your pet in case Fido or Fifi gets lost. Just one problem for Toledo area animal lovers – the Lucas County Dog Warden doesn't scan for the pet identification technology.

Many local veterinarians offer micro-chip pet implants, which are mostly offered by two national companies, Home Again and Avid Microchip. The chip stores a number, and the owner registers the pet with the chip company on the Internet, which includes pet name, breed, age and owner information.

Local pet owners have responded enthusiastically to the service.

"We do quite a few [microchip implants] – more on the dogs than the cats. We've been doing it for about three years," said Veterinarian Jennifer Morman of the Reynolds Road Animal Hospital. "When pet owners come in to have them spayed or neutered, it's a good time to do the procedure, and a microchip is so much easier than a tattoo–"

If a microchipped pet is found by someone and scanned, there is a number to call Avid or Home Again and retrieve the pet and owner information.

Toledo Humane Society scans animals for all microchips. "I have every type of scanner," said Greg Bloomfield, THS President, "I agree wholeheartedly with any type of identification and specifically microchipping– it's important to return an animal to its owner [if lost]."

"We chip every cat that goes out," he adds, "with a cat so many people are opposed to putting on tags and a collar that microchipping makes the most sense–"

However, the Lucas County Dog Warden is not scanning dogs for these microchips. "State law does not compel us to scan," said Thomas Skeldon, chief dog warden for Lucas County. "If [a new law] is passed by the state legislature, we'll do it."

But with between 2,000-3,000 lost or "surrendered" animals euthanized every year in Lucas County, could scanning for these chips save some dogs' lives?

"The vast majority of the dogs that we pick up here aren't licen-sed," said Skeldon. "I was told that we'd have to scan for two years before finding a dog with a chip, there's so few out there with chips." Skeldon claims that "80 percent of chips are untraceable – not registered," meaning the pet owner who bought the chip didn't go on the Internet and fill out the registration. "So, we've got a very small percentage [of dogs] that are chipped and 80 percent of the ones that are, are dead ends–"

Skeldon also claims that you have to put the scanner on the animal, which raises a safety issue for staff. But many other dog wardens in Ohio scan their animals. Franklin County scans each dog three times and finds one chipped dog for approximately every fifty dogs. And they're handling about 10,000 more dogs per year than Lucas County, though Skeldon said sometimes those finds are the same dog being found multiple times. Hamilton County scans each dog four times. Wood County scans its dogs, but according to Chief Deputy Nicholas Salav they've only found three chipped dogs.

Skeldon isn't sold on scanning being a necessity, mostly due to the convoluted state of the technology, with different companies marketing chips, maintaining different databases and pet owners not registering their pet with the companies or updating the information when they move.

"The technology isn't there yet," Skeldon said. "If you had a scanner that you could just point at the dog, that would be the watershed point."

However, local animal lovers think the Lucas County Dog Warden should scan. "In the rescue community, it is considered highly irresponsible for any Dog Warden or establishment whose purpose is to help animals in need, to not check for a microchip," said Valerie Fine, president of the board of directors of the Wood County Humane Society.

Bart Soeder, a veterinarian at the Heatherdowns Veterinary Clinic, agrees.

"I think it's appropriate for all shelters, humane societies and any organization dedicated to locating animals homes and placing them, I think they should be scanning the animals for microchips."