(Seguin) — You’ve got three more days to have your pet microchipped for free.
Seguin Animal Services has been providing the free service throughout June.
Shelter Manager Shelley Lutz says this free service has always been offered twice a year and for plenty of good reason.
“We do it twice a year — both in preparation for July 4 and New Year’s Eve. More animals go missing on July 4 than any other time of the year and so the thought behind it was the more we can get microchipped, the more that we can get returned home if they should go missing very quickly, very easily,” said Lutz.
Lutz believes in microchipping and says it’s the best way to reunite a pet should it ever get lost or stolen.
“Microchips work. Anytime, we pick up an animal or go out to an animal call, we scan everything and so they are scanned. Usually, the microchip is located just under the skin right between the shoulders blades. A number comes up. We are able to put that into our shelter management system or a national database and you put that microchip number in and it tells us where it is registered to and where to call and get that pet returned,” said Lutz.
Lutz says her staff makes the microchipping process as simple as possible. All pet owners have to do is bring their pets in before noon Saturday.
“You just come in. We are open Monday through Friday from 9 to 5 and on Saturday from 9:30 until noon.
You just bring the pet, the driver’s license so we can identify who you are and that’s pretty much the extent of it. We will have you fill out a little form with your information and then we microchip them. The microchips automatically register to the owners through our system. It uploads at night into PetLink so they are automatically enrolled and registered to those owners and then the shelter will always show as a guardian,” said Lutz.
Lutz also has a message for pet owners who already have microchipped animals. She says it’s important that their contact information is up to date.
“The trick to microchips is to keep your information updated. If you change your phone number, if you change an address, you need to call your microchip company immediately and have that information updated because that is the only way that we can get them back to you if that information is current,” said Lutz.
Seguin Animal Services is located at 555 Fred Byrd Drive, just south of the Seguin Coliseum.
The office can also be reached by calling 830-401-2335.