If your dog runs away and gets lost, you can increase its chances of being found if you identify it with one of three common forms of dog identification: a dog id tag, tattoo, or microchip. This article introduces you to these three forms in hopes that you find one appropriate for your pet. Be forewarned, identification may not be an option. In some states, it’s the law! Especially since animal control facilitates are required to look for IDs before euthanizing, adopting out, or shooting strange dogs (as allowed in agricultural communities).

Tags

Also known as dog tags, this form of dog identification should display your dog’s name, your cell phone number, and a license number of your city. To be effective, your dog must wear both tags all the time and they must be legible. Your city’s animal control department will issue a license, and your local pet supply store will customize your dog’s ID tag.

Tattoo

The problem with tags is that they can be removed and replaced with someone else's. That’s why many people opt to identify their dog with a tattoo. A tattoo ID is a group of numbers permanently engraved into a dog’s skin or ear. The numbers correlate to digits stored in a national database.

There’s some controversy surrounding the safety of tattoos however. Some people don’t believe that tattoos are healthy for either dogs (or people) and other people believe that giving a dog a tattoo is unnecessarily painful. There’s also the question of how effective they are. Unless a person knows where to look for a tattoo ID, it doesn’t really serve its purpose.

Microchips

Microchips are tiny devices embedded just beneath a dog’s skin between the shoulder blades. They contain information about the dog and its owner and then store that information in a national database just like the tattoo does.

What makes the microchip preferable is that it can’t be removed like dog tags can, but like the tattoo, it isn’t readily found. To locate a lost dog’s owner, a person would have to bring a dog to a shelter in order to find its owner and even then, the shelter’s scanner might not even work with a chip.

Electronic Pager Collars

Electronic pager collars are fairly new on the dog ID scene, and they use GPS satellite technology to locate lost dogs. This isn’t a bad idea considering a dog could travel any number of miles away from home!