The Importance of Pet Identification
Have you ever been driving or walking along and noticed a stray dog running down the street? The dog looks disheveled, thin and sad. You look to see if the dog has any identification and of course, like most strays, he doesn’t. Unfortunately, this happens way too often, and is easily preventable.
It takes a couple of seconds to place an ID tag on your pet, and also a few seconds for your pet to become lost. Wouldn’t you want the person who finds your animal wandering to call you? We see it all the time, flyers posted throughout the neighborhood, looking through the classified section of the newspaper; the long list of lost pets. It’s so sad!
Every so often, we find ourselves at the local animal shelter putting flyers up of an animal we’ve found wandering around with no identification. What’s sad is that in most cases, we know the animal lives somewhere in our neighborhood, but because of the lack of an ID tag, we have no way of reuniting the animal with his family. So we’re forced to go to the animal shelter after trying unsuccessfully to find his parents.
Why is it so hard for some pet owners to take the time to put some form of ID on their pet? Now we understand that in some cases, the animal had an ID tag that was lost at some point during his wandering, however, these are not the pet owners we’re referring to. We see it everyday in our own neighborhood, people walking their new puppy down the street without a collar or tag. Every time we do, we say to ourselves, “It’s really gonna suck when that dog gets out of his yard and comes up missing.”
With so many different ways to ID your pet, (a chip, ID tag, license, etc.) there’s no excuse for your not taking the time to ID your pet. For goodness sake, they even have LoJack for pets now! Do you know how many animals are put to sleep each year because the pet owner didn’t take the time to place an ID tag on them? The numbers are staggering!
Imagine the pain and suffering that can be avoided by doing this one small task that makes the difference between losing your pet forever, or you and your pet remaining together for life! I love animals and cannot stand for them to suffer needlessly, so do yourself a favor and ensure your pet, your friend’s pet, your mother’s pet, your neighbor’s pet, everyone you know with a pet, has proper identification!