The woman said that she had adopted the dog from one of the shelters in November. The dog had a microchip. On the day the report was filed, the animal was registered in the Indexel SM system in Bolesławiec. The woman also posted notices on local websites because she was very eager to find her pet. She also gave the municipal police officers photographs of the missing dog.
On 9 December, a man contacted the officer on duty at the Bolesławiec Municipal Police, saying that he had found a dog while walking in the municipal forest near Jeleniogórska Street. The microchip number was checked, confirming that it was the dog whose disappearance had been reported two days earlier. The pet was returned to its owner very quickly, precisely because it had been microchipped and registered in the Municipal Police database.
There have been many similar situations in recent years. Owners of dogs that normally lived as far away as Hamburg were found, all thanks to a small microchip and the completion of the dog-registration formalities.
Although there are no regulations requiring dog owners to permanently identify their pets, the Bolesławiec Municipal Police encourages them to have microchips implanted in their dogs and to report them to the dog register maintained by this unit.
Electronic identification of dogs is one method of preventing animal homelessness. Thanks to microchipping, the owner of a lost dog can be quickly identified and notified that the pet has been found. Implanting the microchip is almost painless; it is inserted subcutaneously into the animal’s neck or between its shoulder blades. The animal usually reacts to it as it would to an ordinary injection. The chip is the size of a grain of rice, does not bother the animal and does not cause allergic reactions.
It is worth remembering that electronic identification is an essential requirement for travelling with an animal within the countries of the European Union.
SM Bolesławiec/ii