Have you ever lost a pet? If you have you know that it is a long drawn out process of telephone calls to the shelter, making photocopies of fliers, and distributing the fliers around town. This may be a problem for you, but think of it on a larger scale, of all of the pets that are lost. Believe it or not, there is a huge problem today with over crowded animal shelters. As a matter of fact, the United States the rate at which lost pets are returned to their owner is only 14%. This creates a huge number of animals that are left unidentified and unclaimed. Because of the mass number of animals, the shelters have had to compensate by euthanising these animals. In fact, more than 26,000 animals where euthanized in Oklahoma City alone last year, and an estimated 20 million in America. If your not careful, your pet could be one of the 26,000 next year.
Besides the overwhelming numbers of animals in the shelters due to not spaying or neutering animals, one cause is the inefficiency of the current identification system. The most common forms of identification are tags and tattoos. These methods fail though. First of all, the tags are usually held on by a flimsy aluminum ring and are attached to collars. When the dog escapes th
. . .
Plus the procedure causes minimal pain, unlike tattooing, a very painful procedure in which the animal has to be sedated, and is often times also unreadable. Plus dogs and cats are much hairier, and when dirty, it is almost impossible to see their skin much less a tattoo, if they even have one. In some instances the owner forgets, and then the microchip is useless because there is no way to link the registration number sent out by the microchip to an address or information which is stored in the registry computers, and therefore is useless. The owner can expect to pay anywhere from $25-$60 for the veterinarian to insert the microchip. For birds, the chip is injected under the wing.
For those who think that five years of governmental funding would be too costly, think of it this way. Tattoos, on the other hand, are more permanent and seem like a logical solution to the plan.
Over the years, technology has vastly improved, and is still improving. Finally, the microchip is permanent, and cannot be lost or altered unless surgically removed by a surgeon, making this a very reliable source of identifying the animal. If the government took a small portion of that money and offered microchips to the public, we could solve many of the problems that result in animal cruelty, starvation, and even death. Therefore a new system needs to be implemented. There, the animal and scanned again, and if identified, the owner will be called and the animal will go home. There is not a better time to put into effect what several other countries have already done, and microchip our animals. Finally, shelters need to get involved and push the program through marketing locally, at the same time, asking for donations. The government needs to get involved and reallocate tax dollars to fund an identification program, instead wasting tax dollars on killing animals.
Approximate Word count =
1823
Approximate Pages =
7 (250 words per page double spaced)
Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.
| CREDIT CARD |
ONLINE CHECK |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
JOIN BY PHONE
|
|
|