Chipping in: Council requires putting microchips in pets in some cases

Dan Kulin

Wednesday, April 21, 2004 | 10:56 a.m.

Beginning next week pets who wander from their homes and end up in the Henderson animal shelter will get a sure-fire ID that will get them home if ever end up at a shelter again.

The Henderson City Council Tuesday night passed an ordinance that requires animals who are brought to the shelter or are quarantined for biting to get a microchip implanted between their shoulders.

The microchips provide an almost foolproof way to answer the sometimes tricky question of who owns a pet. That can help return more lost pets to their owners and tell authorities who is responsible for pets that bite or attack others, area animal control officers and animal shelter officials said.

Already some area animal shelters, including Henderson's, put the microchips in animals that are being adopted, and if asked will put them in pets being picked up by their owners for $20 to $25.

The change in Henderson's law, which was approved by a 3-0 vote as Mayor Jim Gibson was absent and Councilman Jack Clark was out of the room, makes Henderson the first city in the area to require the microchips for all pets leaving a shelter or quarantine.

Clark County requires microchips for animals that are determined to be vicious, but not for other animals.

"We do all the adopted animals already," said Gary Weddle, a veterinarian who runs the Henderson Animal Care and Control Facility. "This will give us a positive way to track all owners."

The microchip looks like a small, clear grain of rice and is injected into an animal using a needle, Weddle said.

The microchip will cost pet owners $25 on top of whatever other charges, such as return fees, they must pay to get their pet back. The cost of the implant is already included in the adoption fees, which are $55 for a cat and $65 for a dog.

Mark Fierro, spokesman for the Animal Foundation, which runs the Lied Animal Shelter, said the microchips work.

"It puts a serial number to the animal," Fierro said. "In a shelter an animal's ID can be tenuous. If they get separated from their collar or paperwork, they're just another animal. With a microchip you don't have that problem."

As in Henderson the Lied shelter already puts microchips in any pet that will be adopted.

But Fierro said if the pet is being returned to its owner, the decision is left to the owner.

"It's still their dog so that's their business," Fierro said.

Joseph Freer, a veterinarian and director of the Dewey Animal Shelter, said the microchips are a great idea. He said the microchips can be read by animal control officers in the field, who will sometimes return a pet to its home and avoid bringing it to a shelter.

Animals leaving Dewey come with a coupon that makes the cost of a microchip $20 for pet owners who opt to have it implanted at the shelter's hospital.

Dewey is the animal shelter used by North Las Vegas and the county. The county will leave Dewey for Lied in June 2005, and North Las Vegas officials are considering taking their business to Lied in a year as well.

Lied already handles the animal shelter needs for Las Vegas.

Boulder City, which has its own animal shelter, does not put microchips in any of the pets it handles.

"It's something that could be conceived down the road. It's a good idea," Boulder City Animal Control Supervisor Christina Baley said.

"Everybody's dog gets loose once. It's Murphy's Law," Baley said. "If they're chipped we can identify them and can at least try to find an owner."

Las Vegas Valley Humane Society President Judith Ruiz said that putting microchips in pets is a good idea.

"It's one more bit of insurance to find the owner," she said.

The Humane Society started putting microchips in the pets it sees a month ago, Ruiz said. The cost of the microchips is included in the adoption fee, which is $80 for dogs and $60 for cats.

Across the Las Vegas Valley and in Boulder City, the animal shelters dealt with about 54,000 animals in 2003. Roughly half of those animals were adopted or returned to their owners, and the rest were euthanized.

A count of the number of animals passing through the shelters that had microchips was not available, but some estimated it was somewhere around 15 percent.7"This will give us a positive way to track all owners.