Microchips Good For Shelters, Owners, Pets

Free clinic Thursday helped ease concerns.

If you have a pet, there’s not much worse than the feeling you get when it disappears or gets lost. That is why many people showed up at Animal Allies on Thursday.

No, it was not to find a lost pet, but to make sure theirs is easier to get back if it does get lost. For two hours in the afternoon, free microchipping was made available on a first-come, first-served basis. The microchip is a win for the owner, the pet and those who help out at the shelter.

“Microchips are the fastest way we can reunite people with their pets. If an animal comes in and we scan, and that chip pops up, it can be as quick as five minutes,” said Nicole Facciotto, the Humane Education Manager for Animal Allies.

“If they maybe lost their collar, or their tag fell off, it can take hours to days to make that connection with people. So the chip, again, it’s the fastest and easiest way to make sure your pet is safe, and it just makes our lives so much easier. And it’s so much more fun when an animal comes in and we can super quickly get them back reunited with their families,” said Facciotto.

For Hanna Main, the microchip will bring her some piece of mind. Her cat, Gargamel, often disappears in the woods for stretches at a time. In fact, her cat just returned the day before after disappearing for the fifth time.

“I’ve seen so many stories of people who their cat gets out, or they let their cat out. He has no collar or microchip, and he’s taken to a shelter where he’s put down if he’s not picked up soon enough,” said Main. “Or someone adopts him, or takes him as their own. Because if I see a cat on the side of the road, I like to check on him and see if they have a home. So, not everybody’s nice about that, so it gives me a lot of piece-of-mind to know that there might be somebody out there who sees him on the side of the road and will take him to a place like this and get him checked,” Main said.

Animal Allies says that thanks to a grant from the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation, they are able to offer free microchip clinics several times throughout the year.