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Microchipping advice

KingstonsMom

Well-known member
There's a place here in town that does both national and international microchipping. They insert two chips instead of one, reason being because this way any scanner should be able to read at least one of the chips. Do you think this is a good idea?
 
not sure if you would need both international and national microchipping, i live in the uk and i just had daisy done with the one microchip, it is a pretty painful experience for them, so i wouldnt have liked daisy to have it done twice.
 
I'd only do both if I was going to travel with my dog internationally. In the US, both Home Again and Avid are readily used. Even all the police stations in the collar counties have scanners here.
 
My dog has a french microchip & I can read it with my UK scanner.
So i dont think there is any need for two as long as the chip you get is ISO standard.

But if you did lose a dog abroad & they where scanned would the authorities even check databases outside of that country for the dogs ownership ?
 
The US sadly doesn't use ISO standard (eg international standard). There's no point however in getting the ISO chip even if you are crossing borders though -- everyone else's ISO standard scanner can read the old technology chips still, bizarrely, used in the US and sometimes in Canada -- so even if your dog is in the UK, the standard scanner everyone uses can read the chip.

The problem is however that Avid in the US encrypts the info on the chip so someone in the UK would have to CALL AVID to have them trace you, rather than being able to reach you directly. :roll: :x And the other problem is that no US scanners will read the international chip you have put in anyway -- as few vets, shelters or pounds in the US have scanners than can read other chips. And some US scanners can't even see the Avid chips because you have to *license the technology from Avid*.

So thanks to Avid, who has a monopoly market in the US, they have greatly REDUCED the chances of your dog being returned to you in several ways. There is federal legislation trying to force them to use openly readable chips however.

The ISO standard chips are much better quality and can carry more information so why they don;t switch over to them in the US is a big question. Avid has done a very good job of making people think it is all about the free market but actually it is all about them controlling so much of the market that standards have stood still. This would be like Microsoft refusing to upgrade their Windows operating system to use any Intel microchip designed after 1995 so you'd all be stuck using 1995-era PCs. :x

And yes the different databases are an international and even regional problem too! I wrote about all this for the Guardian in London earlier this year:

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1710249,00.html
 
In all likelihood, Kingston will never leave the United States. You think I should go with the single microchip? Is Avid okay, or should I go with another company???
 
Avid is pretty much what most people get as they control so much of the market. I'd be curious when you are in there to have you ask them why they use an ISO chip as well, when the US chip can already be read by all scanners outside the US -- the problem is when you are going to the US with an ISO chipped dog and the US scanners can't see the chip! It would make more sense to offer the two chips over here rather than over there. On the other hand the ISO chip probably can be read by non-Avid scanners... I'd be interested in their argument though for getting two chips.

I don;t think they inject the chips twice -- they probably insert both at once. They are only the size of a grain of rice. BTW most people microchip at the time they spay/neuter as it can be done while the dog is totally under.
 
All 3 of mine are Avid chipped. I had two of them chipped as puppies when they were under anesthetic for spay/neuter. The other was already chipped when we adopted her.
 
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