What is a microchip and how does it work if you can't see it?

A microchip is the size of a grain of rice and is implanted under your pet's skin between the shoulder blades. Microchips are passive – they have no power supply or moving parts so nothing needs to be recharged or replaced. The microchip is completely bio-compatible and contains nothing that will burn, irritate or otherwise harm your pet.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is the wireless use of electromagnetic fields; when a scanner is waved in the area where the microchip is implanted it transmits a low-power radio signal through its antenna to the microchip so the unique microchip number can be obtained.

Your pet's microchip is not a GPS enabled device - a microchip is a permanent, unalterable form of identification. In the event your pet is lost and scanned, the scanner will only display the pet's unique microchip number.

If your pet is wearing a PetLink collar tag the finder will know to contact us directly, otherwise the finder may use the search engine available on AAHA's website ( https://www.aaha.org/your-pet/pet-microchip-lookup/microchip-search/) to determine which company the microchip is registered with.

Once the finder contacts us, we will file a found pet report and notify you by email, phone and text ( if applicable) to assist with the reunification!