Earlier this morning I posted about an Australian dog who was lost for 9 years and just reunited with her family thanks to a microchip which provided owner information.

I just came across another story reinforcing how important it is to make sure your dog has proper ID, tags and a microchip.

Haley Cyr, a professional dog trainer for more than four years and the Manager of Training at the Animal Defense League, shares an incident that happened to her just a few days ago.

I want to talk about something that happened to me two days ago. It is a long story but it has a moral, I promise! As I opened my front door Sunday evening, there he was; a small tricolor beagle whose name I would later learn was Rocco. He was blindly running through my apartment complex, obviously panicked and in pain. After a few minutes of coaxing and using my shoelace as a leash, he was in my arms. By his panting and the appearance of his gums, I thought he had heat stoke. When I got him inside, I realized that he also had blood on his face and back. Horrible things ran through my mind! Had he been hit by a car? Had he been in a dog fight?

Once he was cooled down and safe, I decided to drive around my neighborhood and look for lost Beagle signs, hoping to find an owner with tears and a leash looking for their dog. Rocco hopped right into my car; he was obviously somebody’s baby. He was neutered (hurray!), but had no collar. I prayed that he had been micro-chipped. We drove around my neighborhood with no luck. I decided to take him to the emergency vet to be checked, and hopefully to find his parents through (still praying) his microchip.

As I drove out of my neighborhood hood, I heard sirens. Nothing I could have imagined could have been worse then what had really happened to him. My heart dropped into my stomach. A little Mazda had apparently crashed into a parked 18-wheeler at full speed. The entire roof of the car had been ripped off. Read the rest of this entry »

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After I received our Together Tags, an innovative pet ID and recovery service, I posted a follow-up on the product. In the article I mentioned that statistically it’s said only 1 in 5 dogs who are lost are ever reunited with their owner. Not great odds, which is why we ordered the tags.

Recently Dogster and Catster took a poll to find out about their members’ experiences with lost pets. You can see that almost 10% of Dogsters had a dog that went missing and was never found. Although that number may not seem high, it is if your pet is one of the 10%.  Also, if you look at the overall numbers you’ll see that almost 50% of Dogsters have experienced a missing pet at one point.

Dogsters -

No, thank dog! (51.92%)

Yes, for a couple hours (28.17%)

Yes, for a couple days (6.80%)

Yes, for over a week (3.60%)

Yes, and was never found (9.52%)

Interestingly, for those Catsters that lost a cat almost 22% never saw their pet again, double the amount compared to dogs. Read the rest of this entry »

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