Just $10 to Save a Life

It doesn't seem like much, but $10 can really mean the life or death for a pet. How so? Imagine your pet finds itself in the grasps of a local animal control facility. They have 3 to 7 days, sometimes more, most times less, for you to reclaim them. But how do you know they are there? If your pet has a microchip, animal control workers will scan your pet, get the id number, and give you a call to reunite the two of you.

So where does the $10 come in to play? Many vets charge between $30 to $60 for your pet to be microchipped. If you have multiple pets, this can be a huge expense. So we started offering low-cost clinics three years ago using the 24PetWatch program. So for just $10, you can have piece of mind that your pet will be reunited with you rather than counted among the millions of homeless pets euthanized each year.

Yesterday, we held a low-cost microchip clinic at Tybee Island's Memorial Park (thanks to Tybee City Council for their help). Pet owners brough 103 pets to us, 83 dogs and 20 cats. We never got to sit down, and Dr. Charra and Anne of All About Pets Mobile Vet even stayed late to get everyone chipped. But most astounding was that the pets were not all from Tybee; in fact, only 28 were. The rest came from much farther away: Midway, Guyton, Bluffton, Hilton Head Island, Pooler, Springfield, Bloomingdale, Richmond Hill, Garden City, Collins, and Savannah. It really brought home that what we are doing makes a huge difference for these pets, so much so that we are going to add more clinics this summer instead of just one a quarter. We just have to find more businesses to allow us the space, and a few more vet techs to give up their time.