MIDLAND, Texas — Lots of pets are reported missing every year on or around 4th of July.
Even if you feel you’ve secured your pets for 4th of July, fireworks can scare an animal enough that they’ll still sometimes find some way to get out. This is because they’re so scared and you may not realize they’re gone till the next day.
“4th of July, of course, a lot of animals do get scared. We always recommend that you make sure that they're microchipped, because if they do get out, they will be found," said Kim Billingsley, intake coordinator for Fix West Texas. "They get found by somebody the first thing people are going to do is to ask you about microchipping, like people have Facebook pages, there's all kinds of resources out there and it does help.”
It used to be when you lost your pet you had to hope that you found them when out looking. Or, hopefully, someone in the neighborhood who knew you did find them and brought them over to you.
Billingsley was able to explain how microchipping works.
“So microchipping is when you put a microchip in the dog, it just goes right under the skin and it is a scan with a number that actually goes into our system and you can also go in and register it under your name, your phone number, your address with the name of the dog and it helps when the dogs get out,” said Billingsley.
The process of tracking down a pet without a microchip can be tedious and take longer than owners would like.
“It's kind of a luck of the chance, a chance of luck or it's just, you know, if people posted on Facebook or they just happen to be down the street and their neighbors, if you might get lucky, there's a lot of dogs that go out there that don't get found because they're not microchipped," Billingsley said. "Then they end up going back into the system and really get surrendered by people or they keep them or even worse, you don't know what can.”
Billingsley also said besides microchipping your pet it's just as important that they have all their shots too so that if they're exposed to anything while lost, they have less of a chance of getting sick.