A quick reminder to all.

I was out working Shadow at 8pm tonight, in the dark.

As we were walking along a border collie/kelpie cross type dog joined us, running along. She started near the pub, which looked closed, I thought she would go back to her house, but no, she kept coming.

I changed my normal walk so I didn't cross roads, as she was obviously going to keep coming and did a lap back to where she joined me (which was also next to the police station). No-one at the pub. Dog had a tag (presumably council) that was worn to a simple piece of silver and nothing else.

I was just thinking what next, police station? home? what? when the dog crossed the road before I could grab it, well half crossed and stopped in the middle. A car coming up the road, turned at the intersection and STOPPED.

It was the owners of the dog. They were on the way to hospital with their daughter with suspected appendicitis, and realised they needed to go home for their medicare card, and saw their dog.

They were so bloody lucky.

The moral of the story, micro chipping is great, if your dog is still alive you will get it, but a $2 tag with your phone number means that if someone finds it, you will get your dog quicker, and dog does not need to play car roulette until someone can read the microchip.

Absolutely agree JRA our $2 tags have paid for themselves on numerous occassions.

My dog keeps eating or chewing hers. I wrote my mobile number on her collar in a fabric pen instead.

That pup was lucky indeed.

In NSW it is a requirement by law to have a tag with contact details on dogs and cats.

It also stops ppl keeping animals as they think no one owns them. Funny thing is that if you take the animal to a vets saying it's yours and it doesn't have a chip, if they scan it and find it does have a chip they aren't allowed to call the real owner without the permission of the "client" that brought the animal in. For some reason the law feels that it is a breech of privacy.

Dont you just love that!!! So stupied!!!

Our house is well fenced (new fences), our gate padlocked and the other side is our garage (small block). My 2 usually dont have collars on when we are at home as there is a risk of them getting caught whilst playing, strangulation ect. Mine dont jump fences (cant LOL) but I know that is a concern for some people.

Its a tough one as I actually found a Australian Terrier tonight on my walk and rang the owners (though I also knew where he lived) from the tag on his collar. So far no collars at home have worked for us I atleast know that they are microchipped and our dogs are very familiar around our neighborhood.

I am actually more concerned about them being stolen.

Mine have number and address and when Chloe got out once she was brought back to our home They are never without collar especially as mine are beagles with huge noses!

My cat was run over on sunday

i would never have known if the lady hadnt texted me to tell me where to find her body.


I got to bury her. So yes my "$2" tsgs were well worth it.


she lived with my dp- when i called him he was sure she was asleep on the bed with her babies

Wow lucky pup. I had a very friendly lab follow me home the other day. I called the number on his collar and it turned out he lived over the road and a tradesman had let him out and then left. His owner was at work. Anyway he spent a very pleasant couple of hours in my backyard before his very grateful owners could come and get him. Goodness knows what would have happened if I couldn't have called his owners, or street is quiet but there is a busy road at either end.

a tag would have helped dh and i alot when we found a dead cat in the middle of our street (a completely different vent), we picked it up, popped it in a box (we werent going to leave it where any of the neighbourhood kids would find it) and started door knocking, we were pretty sure we knew who it belonged to but it took forever to find them.

did the owners of the dog say anything to you when they stopped?

My dog has a tag on her. It has her name and our address and home phone number. Thinking I probably should have put my mobile as well.

I would have to extremely unlucky for her to get out though. I bring her inside when I go out. She is only in the backyard when I am home.

I feel safer when she is inside. Probably silly but do worry about someone stealing her from my yard.

Yep I agree. I have returned many dogs to their owners quickly because of ID tags.

Mine almost always have their collars with an ID tag. Unfortunately at the moment my pug does not have hers on all that much as my shep pup tends to pull on it when he wants to play.

I may be convinced to let them wear one of these.

http://www.naturalpetstore.com.au/d/KSCL/2...r---large-size/

I have breakaway collars on the cats! Sometimes when I come home, a collar is on the floor from their wrestling matches so it doesn't take too much pressure for them to pop off.

I agree jarrah has a collar with her name and our phone number sewed on like THIS as well as a tag and micochipped.

I absolutely agree. Five years ago we arrived home and found our beautiful cat dead in the gutter. He had been propped up by someone, in the hope that his owners ( us ) would find him. When I later checked my answering machine, there was a message from the man who had moved our cat to the side of the road. Upon calling the man, I learnt that our cat had been hit by a youing driver, who was in tears, and very upset that he had run over an animal. The man on the phone had come out of his house to comfort the young man and my cat, as he died. A very sad story, but if there had been no phone number for the man to call, then we would have always wondered exactly what had happened.

I can't tell you the number of pets we have found and returned to the owner, because they had a basic id tag. Two weeks ago my DS had a dog follow him home from school. The dog had an address attached, so we took him home to a very relieved owner. I'm sure that a lot of people find a cute animal (even one with a microchip), and end up keeping it because there are no id tags attached.

My dogs both have collars on during the day, and they only come off when its time to crate them of a night. They're both microchipped too (and its up to date with details).

The cat is also microchipped, although it wasn't a requirement for her. I got it done when she was under for a teeth clean. She always has a collar on - even though she's an indoor cat. Just in case. She doesn't have it on at the moment, as the fur around her neck is just growing back in post surgery shave. It won't be long now though, the moulting season is upon us!

Great idea. We had a microchipped cat, with a collar but not our contact details. She was hit by a car quite far from our house because she was spooked by a new dog next door. As she looked identical to the cat who lived next to the accident site, the "owner" buried her in his back garden.

It was only by chance I found out. A lovely lady travelling in the car behind the one that hit my cat had rescued her and put a call out on ABC radio to find the owner. A listener who had seen my missing pet poster called me. I had rung all the local vets, but as my cat wasn't taken there, no-one had scanned the microchip.