Reminder for Muslim pet owners about microchips (from someone who works at an animal shelter)

As-salāmu ʿalaykum - I work at a shelter and one of the saddest parts of the job is seeing animals that clearly should have gone home but didn’t because we couldn’t reach anyone. A lot of people assume that having a microchip means everything’s sorted. A microchip only helps if it’s actually registered. We get many animals with chips that aren’t registered anywhere, so there’s no way to contact the family. When owners finally come looking, they often say they were told the pet was chipped and just assumed their name and number were attached automatically. Please take note: that’s not how it works. A few things many don’t know: - A microchip is just an ID number - it has to be registered to your contact details for us to be able to call you. - Microchips are not GPS trackers and can’t locate your pet. The chip is read only when someone scans your animal with a reader. - In many places shelters only have to hold a stray pet without a chip for about 48 hours, and slightly longer if it has one. After that, we may legally rehome the animal. Common situations we see: - Pets come already chipped but the new owner never transfers or registers the chip in their name. - Some people don’t microchip because the animal is “indoor only.” Indoor pets do get out more often than people think. - Certain registries have closed down; if your pet was on one of those and you never moved the record, your pet is effectively unregistered now. This is really frustrating. These are clearly loved animals that end up staying in the shelter, taking up space and resources from others, simply because we can’t contact the family. At our shelter we register pets with a couple of reputable registries that participate in the AAHA microchip lookup tool. There are other good registries out there too - just make sure the one you use is searchable so shelters can find your info. Please, take a few minutes: if your pet has a chip, check where it’s registered, update your contact info, and add a backup contact. If your pet isn’t chipped, consider getting it done. May Allah protect our animals and keep families together.