When we got together as a team we talked about all the big problems with owning a pet. There’s a lot of them lets be honest. (You can read a bit more about our vision for pet owners HERE and for pet care businesses HERE.)Pet microchip data storage jumped right out at us. We first talked about our own registration processes or lack thereof. We asked pet owners a few questions about it too. Our conversations went a bit like this:
- Is your pet microchipped? – Nearly everyone answered yes
- Is your pet registered on an government compliant microchip database and their details kept up to date? – Nearly everyone said no or they weren’t sure.
At this point we thought wow! How many people haven’t updated their pets details?
We did our research and found that is is estimated that only 31% of pets have up to date details on an government compliant database. In one survey of 7,700 stray pets the following was found:
- Dogs without a microchip found their way home in just 21.9% of cases.
- Dogs with a microchip found their way home in 52.2% of cases!
- Cats without a microchip found their way home in just 1.8% of cases.
- Cats with a microchip found their way home in 38.5% of cases!
By ensuring your pets microchip is updated on a government compliant database you massively increase the chance of your pet finding their way home if they ever get lost. Did we mention for dog owners in the UK it is law that you keep these details up to date?
Why don’t more people register their pets microchip data on a database?
We asked this question to a lot of pet owner groups and got a number of different answers which we’ve categorised below:
- We didn’t know we had to do this. We’ll be doing it later today.
- I thought our vet took care of that? Maybe I’m wrong.
- I did it when we first got our pet. I can’t even remember who I registered with and we’ve moved twice since then.
- We were told registering would be free but it turned out to be £15.95 We were meant to look into how to do it for free but we forgot.
What can MyPet do to help with pet microchipping?
With our microchip database you can do a few things:
- You can search to see if your pets microchip is stored on another database. This will show you which database has information on your pets microchip and direct you to their website.
- You can also add your pet to our microchip database. You can do that HERE. (Remember if you already use the MyPet app just head straight to the login page to do this.) We are the easiest and cheapest way to register your pet in the UK.
- We’ll remind you twice a year to check your details are up to date.
- We’ll email you if your pet’s microchip is ever searched on another Defra compliant database.
- We’ve a lot more features coming! If you’ve any feedback, problems we can help with or suggestions I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at conor@18.130.156.199!
To search to see if your pets microchip is registered with a database click HERE. If you want to go ahead and register your microchip with MyPet you can click HERE.
Have questions before registering your pet? We have some FAQ’s HERE and if that doesn’t help just pop me an email – conor@18.130.156.199.
If you would like to read a bit more about the UK Government regulations, you can check out THIS page on the gov.uk website.We have lots more features coming your way on MyPet. Don’t forget to like / follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
