To increase the chance pets can be reunited with their owners, if lost, Holbrook Animal Care & control and AKC Reunite are providing pet owners with a more permanent way to I.D. their pets. A walkin microchip clinic will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., on Saturday, Nov. 18, at Holbrook Animal Care and Control, located at 105 Airport Road in Holbrook. An animal control officer will be inserting microchips for $10 in cash, exact change. The cost will include the microchip, insertion and enrollment in a recovery service. Why? Tags alone can get lost or be removed and microchipping is an easy way to permanently I.D. your pet.
The joint effort is an initiative to get pets microchipped and enrolled in AKC Reunite’s recovery program.
“We want to make sure every pet that is separated from its owner can be reunited with that family,” said Tom Sharp, vice president and CEO of AKC Reunite. “It is so easy to have one’s pet microchipped and enrolled in our recovery service database; it would be heartbreaking to let that be the one thing to keep a pet and its owner apart.”
The tiny rice-sized I.D. is encoded with a unique number and implanted just under the skin in the scruff of the neck. The process is simple and only takes a few seconds. The “chip” can later be detected and read by a scanner used by shelters, veterinarians, and other agencies.
At the microchip clinic, participants will be provided with an AKC Reunite enrollment form at the time the “chip” is implanted. Fill out the form to enroll a pet in AKC Reunite’s 24-hour recovery service. This will ensure that the owner will be contacted when a pet is reported found. In addition, it is very important to keep the information that is saved in the database current. If a pet owner should later move or get a new telephone number, please notify AKC Reunite immediately at 1-800-252-7894.
The pet will also receive a plastic collar tag with the pet’s microchip I.D. number and AKC Reunite’s 24/7 toll-free phone number. This special I.D. tag is a supplement to the microchip and can speed up the recovery process. When a pet is found, Good Samaritans, animal control, veterinarians and rescue groups will first look for visible I.D. and call the tollfree number on the tag. If there is no tag, they will scan the pet for a microchip and alert AKC Reunite who will then contact the owner. Pet owners can also go to www.akcreunite.org to order a stainless-steel tag in the design of choice that includes the pet’s name.
Millions of pets are enrolled in AKC Reunite, which is the largest nonprofit recovery database of microchipped pets in the United States. The program maintains the secure database and a trained staff provides recovery services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. To date, hundreds of thousands of pets nationwide have been recovered and reunited with their owners through AKC Reunite.
AKC Reunite, an affiliate of the American Kennel Club®, is the largest non-profit pet microchip identification and recovery service provider in the United States. Since 1995 AKC Reunite has helped pet owners reunite with their lost animals via identification and 24/7 pet recovery specialists, enrolling over 10 million companion animals and recovering more than 500,000 lost pets. AKC Reunite microchips are a popular choice of pet professionals throughout the country for permanent pet identification.
AKC Reunite has donated more than $11 million since 2002 for petrelated causes including disaster preparedness and relief like the AKC Pet Disaster Relief trailer donation program. AKC Reunite also provides free recovery service enrollment for all active service, military, and law enforcement K-9 dogs. For more information visit www.akcreunite.org or follow us on Facebook ( www.facebook.com/ akcreunite).
