Dogs can be marked with a microchip inserted under the skin. In this way, their identity can be determined if necessary.
In the following paragraphs, we will explain to you how dog chipping works, why it is generally recommended and under which conditions you as a dog owner are obliged to do it.
To have your dog chipped, you need to visit a vet. He or she can insert the chip under the skin of your four-legged friend in a tiny operation. To ensure that the microchip can be easily located and read if necessary, dogs are always chipped in the neck.
The actual insertion of the chip, which is about 12 millimetres long, is comparable to a vaccination injection. For your four-legged friend, the procedure is therefore neither particularly painful nor associated with any significant risks. An anaesthetic is not necessary and you can take your dog home directly after the chipping.
The costs for chipping your dog are based on the guidelines of the scale of fees for veterinarians. They can vary somewhat depending on the actual expense. As a rule, you can expect to pay around 50 to 60 euros, including the cost of the chip itself.
There is probably no dog that likes going to the vet. Many a four-legged friend even panics because of it. If this also applies to your dog, then besides patience and training, the administration of Shiimun Calm as a food supplement can be useful.
Shiimun Calm is a natural supplement with carefully selected ingredients such as shiitake and green tea. The easily-digestible food supplement can help your dog relax more easily.
Even if the vet does not suddenly become the best friend of the stubborn four-legged friend, the nutritional supplementation with Shiimun Calm can at least help to make the visit to the vet's office a little less stressful.
View Shiimun Calm in the Bellfor shop.
The microchip is not equipped with a GPS receiver. Accordingly, it is not possible to locate your dog. The only information stored on it is a 15-digit number. This number is assigned only once so that dogs can be uniquely identified by their chip.
Unfortunately, it happens again and again that dogs run away from their owners. If the dog is not found by an acquaintance, it can be difficult to identify the owner in such a situation.
However, if your dog is chipped, its microchip can be easily read, so that you as the owner are informed promptly and can bring your missing four-legged friend home again as quickly as possible.
In practice, however, this only works if you have registered your dog in one of the common directories and also entered your personal contact details there.
Since your dog's microchip only contains a uniquely assigned number, it is of course not possible to draw any conclusions about you as the owner just by reading it out.
To ensure that you can be contacted quickly in an emergency, you must also register your chipped four-legged friend in a database. Appropriate directories are, for example, the website Findefix, which is operated by the German Animal Welfare Association, and the portal Tasso. Both directories allow you to register pets free of charge.
There is no general obligation to have dogs chipped. However, if you are planning to go on holiday with your four-legged friend to another country, you will not be able to avoid it.
In this case, the EU stipulates that you must carry an EU pet passport for your dog. You will only receive this passport if you have your dog chipped beforehand.
Apart from that, dog health insurances usually require a microchip to be able to allocate possible veterinary costs to the insured dog without any doubt. Often the costs for chipping the dog are covered by the insurance.
In principle, you can of course also equip your dog with a collar on which your contact information is written. Another alternative is tattooing the ears of the four-legged friends.
The latter was common practice until a few years ago. However, tattoos fade over time, so that after a few years they are hardly decipherable. In addition, there is always the risk that numbers are given more than once.
Chipping is therefore without doubt the best way to provide your dog with proof of identity. Unlike a tattoo, the chip remains permanently legible and, unlike a tag on a collar, cannot simply be lost.
Chipping is a very minor procedure for your dog, which causes hardly any pain and has practically no risks. If your four-legged friend should ever run away from you despite all the care you have taken, you can count on the chip and the entry in one of the above-mentioned registers to identify and inform you as the owner in good time.
There is therefore no reason why you should not have the chip inserted by a vet in good time. If you are travelling with your dog to another country or want to take out veterinary health insurance for it, chipping is obligatory.
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