Steve and Diana Hawkes had recently lost a beloved cat to coyotes when they moved to Antrim four years ago. Their former home in rural Pennsylvania had seemed to have been a beacon for lost pets, and they soon realized that the Hillsborough and Antrim communities had a similarly constant problem with lost and found pets.
There’s a special kind of heartache, and even some guilt, when a pet simply disappears, Diana Hawkes said, as compared to knowing you did all you could when a pet succumbs to a long illness. “In a sudden loss… one feels they could have done more to prevent, or solve the situation,” she said.
The Hawkes’ husky, Nikita, and their five cats are all microchipped, but Hawkes learned that Antrim police themselves lack a microchip scanner when she took in a stray cat a couple years ago and was referred to the Hillsborough police, since it was after hours for the local veterinary clinic. “We felt such a simple tool shouldn’t have to be “shared,” even between small departments with modest budgets,” she said, and donated an ISO-only scanner to the Antrim police in December.
Although the police haven’t had to use it yet, they’re grateful to have it, Antrim Police Chief Scott Lester said. Sometimes Antrim police get multiple lost pet calls in a week, and other times months go by without a call, he said, although lost dog calls typically pick up in the spring and summer. Animal abandonment is not a frequent issue in town, he said, but a couple years ago the police managed to reunite a found dog with a long-haul trucker in New York after it jumped out of the cab, he said. The police had typically scanned animals at a local vet or used social media to track down an owner if they didn’t already know the animal or couldn’t find a dog license, he said.
Quickly scanning a microchip to identify an animal preempts an owner having to canvass an ever-widening area or post to social media, where their search may never be seen by the right person, and some organizations put scanners on long poles to reach an unapproachable or large livestock animal, Hawkes said.
“We know too well that every lost hour is an agony of searching and wondering,” Hawkes said, like when Nikita got loose without a collar soon after they moved to town, and it was only by luck that a passerby knew where the dog belonged when the police picked her up.
Police departments and animal shelters can do more with a scanner than a private citizen can, Hawkes said, because they can register to instantly look up an animal’s owner’s name, phone number, and address, whereas a layperson would have to fill out their finder information and submit it online so the chip company can contact the owners. Even so, the Hawkes family bought themselves a scanner at the same time they donated one. “We wanted to offer to scan too, as an option for those who might prefer to avoid police involvement for such matters, or if police cannot attend to an animal concern right away,” Hawkes said.
ISO-only scanners cost less than $100 and pick up modern microchips, Hawkes said, whereas truly universal units run anywhere between $400 and $900 and can detect older microchips, which will hopefully go out of circulation soon as some shelter’s and breeder’s bulk supplies deplete, she said. The Great Brook Veterinary Clinic in Antrim and Foxbend in Hillsborough have universal scanners, Hawkes said.
“We urge those interested in microchipping to never pay for “registering” your pet’s chip number and information with any website service,” Hawkes said. “It is unnecessary. The provider who implants the chip will give you the directions to register your chip with their information bank, and no further payments is needed,”
Antrim area residents can call Diana Hawkes during reasonable hours at 814-688-0241 if they’re in need of a microchip scanner.