Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
P. O. Box 3711
204 Broad Street
Martinsville, Virginia 24115
276-638-8801
Toll Free: 800-234-6575
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
By DEBBIE HALL - Bulletin Staff Writer
A microchip has been credited with reuniting two pets with their owner.
Henry County Sheriff Lane Perry said two dogs allegedly were taken from an area near their owner’s home. Court records relating to a man indicted in the case on Tuesday indicate the dogs allegedly were taken from Cari Zimmer of Chatmoss on Nov. 3.
“I’m very thankful” the dogs were returned, Zimmer said of Jackson, a black and white border collie, and Sammy Jo, a tan and white mixed breed.
Perry said the reunion was not common.
Without the microchip, he said, “we probably never would have known what had happened to them.”
Leslie Hervey, executive director of the SPCA of Martinsville-Henry County, said statistics show that three of 10 dogs go missing in their lifetimes. Only one is reunited with its owner, she said.
“Most of the time, if an animal is lost or stolen, its collar and tags are removed,” Hervey said. “But you can’t remove a microchip. It’s permanent identification that cannot be changed” without an owner’s permission.
In Zimmer’s case, animal control officers were alerted when a man allegedly tried to drop two dogs off at a shelter in Roanoke, according to Henry County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ben Rea.
The staff there became concerned when the man allegedly would not provide information required by law or sign the necessary release form, Rea said. A shelter worker wrote down the man’s license tag information when he left before the officers arrived, Rea added.
After checking the two dogs, the shelter staff used a microchip reader to track the animals to the Martinsville-Henry County SPCA, Rea said.
One of the animals had been adopted through the local SPCA and the other had come from a local dog pound, Zimmer said.
Microchipping is painless, Hervey said. A device about the size of a grain of long rice is injected between an animal’s shoulder blades, she said.
The device “has a unique ID” that is registered to the owner and can be read at many shelters and animal rescue organizations in the United States, she said.
Microchips cannot be detected without a microchip reader, she said.
The SPCA has a reader and also equipped both local dog shelters with one, she said. Animal control officers use the readers to check incoming animals “to make sure they don’t have anyone’s pet,” Hervey said.
The implanting procedure costs $25, Hervey said. She encourages “every pet owner to get one for their animal.”
On Tuesday, Michael T. Martin, 40, of 205 Leatherwood Circle, Martinsville, was indicted on two counts of larceny of an animal in connection with the case, according to court records.
An indictment does not indicate guilt. It is a grand jury’s determination that there is enough evidence to hold a trial.
Rea said investigators were told there was “an ongoing problem” with the dogs. “The animals apparently were aggressive with cats in the neighborhood,” he said.
However, Rea said a check of records back to 2002 found that no complaints of aggressive dogs had been made in the area, except for one unrelated dog bite. |
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