Local Mid Dorset and North Poole MP Annette Brooke has joined forces with the Kennel Club for National Microchipping Month to spread the word about the forthcoming compulsory microchipping regulation which is due to come into force in England in April 2016.
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Local MP Annette Brook has joined forces with the Kennel Club for National Microchipping Month to spread the word after research overwhelmingly found that dog owners are either unaware or confused about the upcoming legislation.
The research, carried out by Petlog, the UK’s largest lost and found database for microchipped pets, which is managed by the Kennel Club has found that almost half of all dog owners are unaware of the impending compulsory microchipping legislation. More worryingly however is the lack of understanding of how a microchip works, with more than an estimated 900,000 dog owners in the UK thinking that a microchip acts as a GPS device.
For ten years the Kennel Club and Petlog have been running National Microchipping Month to highlight the benefits of microchipping and educate pet owners about the need to keep contact details up to date. However, with the imminent regulation change in April 2016, this year’s National Microchipping Month is also raising awareness of what is happening in regards to legislation.
Annette commented, “Microchipping has reunited hundreds of thousands of pets and owners in the UK since it was introduced over twenty years ago. It also has the ability to save our local area significant amounts of money in having to kennel stray dogs that cannot be returned home because their owners cannot be identified. This is why it is so important to keep contact details up to date and why this will be a requirement under the new regulations.”
The research found that half of pet owners (51%) do not know if their contact details are up to date with their microchip database. Without keeping contact details up to date it becomes a lot harder and slower, if possible at all, to reunite pets and owners when contact details become outdated.
A microchip is about the size of a grain of rice. Each microchip has a unique number which is identified when scanned and linked to information held on a database such as Petlog. Welfare organisations, vets, dog wardens and other authorised users will scan a lost pet when it comes to them and contact the microchip’s database to find the owner’s details. Dogs Trust, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and Blue Cross are all offering free microchipping initiatives at their centres.
Professor Steve Dean, Chairman of the Kennel Club, said: “We are grateful to Annette for giving her support to National Microchipping Month and highlighting microchipping and the need to keep information on the microchip database up to date as an essential part of responsible dog ownership.”
National Microchipping Month is sponsored by Petlog and takes place throughout June. To find out more about National Microchipping Month and events that are taking place in your area, visit www.nationalmicrochippingmonth.org.uk.
