GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A company that specializes in pet microchips announced it is shutting down, and many pet owners are worried if they are impacted.
Save This Life is based on the West Coast, so most people in West Michigan should be unaffected.
“The easiest thing to do is when you take your animal to the vet, they can scan the microchip, and they can make sure that it's still scanning correctly,” says Michele’s Rescue Coordinator Theresa Ockaskis.
Save This Life disconnected all microchip registrations from the system that pulls up pets’ information when scanned.
Michele’s Rescue tells FOX 17 it’s rare for a decision like this to be made, adding it should be a wake-up call for pet owners to ensure all microchips can be found on the national registry.
"That's where you would enter in the phone number, and it's going to ask you information such as your address and your phone number,” says Ockaskis. “Really, they're asking you for information on the best way to contact you in the event that your pet is found, and that is where you would go online to complete that information yourself, and you would need to know what the pets microchip number is in order to access your contact information."
It's free to register at freepetchipregistry.com, and it accommodates all brands.
For pets that need new microchips, Michele’s Rescue says microchips are easy and painless. One microchip is roughly the size of a grain of rice.
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