When was the last time you checked your pet’s microchip works? Let’s all do it on August 15th for #CheckTheChipDay – every year – or more often. Our statistics show one in three pets could not be reunited due to missing or incorrect data. Chip data fails don’t come up much on the news. That’s unless you saw the recent story of Flash, the long lost Sprocker.
News Flash
Flash would have got back home much sooner if her chip data hadn’t been useless.
She was young when she was stolen, along with five other family dogs. The others got home eventually, but years later her owner was still frantically sharing Flash’s photo using DogLost posters on social media – desperately hoping for news seven years later.
She’d marked all the dogs’ database records as stolen. There was a crime reference number from the police, and it had all worked perfectly to reunite the five other dogs.
We can’t know for sure, but probably, as Flash got older, she was no longer as financially attractive to use as a breeding slave. When she turned up in rescue last November, the chip record only revealed her name, breed, and date of birth. Everything else was missing. No stolen flag, no contact details.
By chance, months later someone spotted a photo of Flash online with her new owner. Flash was reunited. But how many pets with missing data won’t ever get home?
This annual #CheckYourChipDay will give everyone a much-needed reminder that the chip without data is totally pointless.
PetDatabase.com was created to make it much easier for everyone’s pets to stay safe. It’s completely free to update and you are always in control. You can change a phone number 24/7 – handy if you’ve lost your phone or run out of charge.
And best of all, when someone keys in your pet’s chip number in any of the very many Check-A-Chip portals you’ll get a ‘safety ping’ alert to notify you.
#CheckTheChip Day – be safe not sorry
A recent survey* showed 95% of dogs go missing at some point in their lives. 92% got their dogs back. Improve your chances of being one of these lucky ones, check your pet’s data is always accurate.
51% of lost dogs are only lost only for minutes, but it’s enough for your legs to turn to jelly. For 32% there are hours of panic. For 7% days of worry. For nearly 10% there’s months and years or the grim possibility of there never being any closure.
Hope Rescue told us that only 1 in 4 dogs they see have chips that can reunite them with their people – but many more are loved and claimed. Owners are often seemingly unaware that data was absent from the chip database.
Fishing for #CheckTheChip shares!
Let’s make #CheckTheChipDay trend. Please share this blog widely on social media.
A chip without up-to-date data is as useless as a bicycle to a fish.
(Incidentally, there is something called Fish and Chip Day every year, too!)
How to #CheckTheChip:
- Key in the chip number here (see right): Petdatabase.com
- We show you which of the 18 databases thinks it may have that number.
- You can contact them direct and check everything’s up to date, but most of them will charge you to change.
- Or you can click again and your data will be safe with PetDatabase.com and we will never charge you to update your data.
- And we’ll give you ‘safety pings’ if anyone types your number into another Check a Chip portal.
Can’t find your chip numbers?
Just fill everything else in, we’ll tell you what you need to do. We’ve got you!
Please get behind #CheckTheChipDay by sharing our posts on social media. Let’s get every pet safe and found.
If you have a scanner and would be happy to use it, please do get in touch. Let’s get everyone checking their chips and getting more lost pets home. Maybe you could do a #CheckTheChipDay for your rescue? Or borrow a scanner for the next village fete or fun dog show?
Some people have dogs with a completely different chip number than they thought they have – we’ve discovered chip numbers swapped by mistake between littermates. Check it out – before it’s too late.
DogLost, SAMPA (Stolen and Missing Pets Alliance), Pet Theft Awareness, Pet Theft Reform and Drone SAR for Lost Dogs all support #CheckTheChipDay.
