Monday, October 17, 2005
Chips: Not Just for Potatoes
Last Saturday, a brindle pit bull was abandoned on our property. Sadly, I'm at the point where when a pit bull is abandoned on the property, I pretty much think "ah. here we go again". It's a dissapointingly common occurance. The Oakland SPCA and Oakland Animal Services seem to get confused the the public's mind. So, although we do not accept strays, abandoned animals end up at our doorstep fairly often. When they do, we take them to Oakland Animal Services.If you are an adult brindle pit bull, your chances of being adopted are painfully slim. The brindle coloration is beautiful. It's shades of brown, red, and black pressed in wild, streaks along the entire body of an animal. It kind of reminds me of the stone "tiger's eye". But, for whatever reason, people seem to think that brindle dogs are more likely to be aggressive than other colors, and they get passed over. We had a pomeranian sit in our kennels for three weeks...an unheard-of period of time for a small, fluffy, friendly dog...and I cannot help but wonder if party of the reason was that his adorably poofy fur happened to be brindle.
Sufficed to say, when I heard a brindle pit bull had been "dumped" I was just about to shake my head, roll my eyes, and mutter something cynical. Then I heard the rest. "We scanned him. He's got a microchip." A tiny bit of technology, the size of a grain of rice, had been inserted under the dog's skin, between the shoulderblades. When our microchip scanner was run along the dog's back, his identification number appeared in the scanner's read out. We called the national database, gave them the number, and they gave us the phone number of his owners. Instead of having to send yet another pit bull to OAS, we got to reunite a family with the beloved pet they had lost the day before.
Microchips. All of my dogs have microchips, and I hope they will never need them. But, I would much rather they have them and not need them, than need them and not have them. After all, we never plan for our pets to run away.
But we do need a plan for how to get them back home.
