Is microchip safe for German Shepherd? - Page 1

how safe is microchip? people been telling me that its not safe. please help

The dangers of being lost far outweigh any danger of a microchip! I have never had a microchip problem; I have had microchips save dogs more than once!

What's your concern with the micro-chip? I have used micro-chips for a number of years without any problems...
To be honest with you there have been two types of identification...1-Tattoos 2-Micro-chips...Neither of which are totally safe or good...The Tattoo can become covered by hair and hard to read and/or The tattoo will fade and become hard to read...The Micro-chip can move and become lost or can't be found when scanned and/or The Micro-chip won't work (defective)...
I think the Micro-chip is still the better alternative but not perfect...I use a Micro-chip that has a little hook on it that is suppose to help with the chip moving...
I think the benefits of using the Micro-chip are out-weighed by the fact that they can and do help to located lost dogs/animals...

~Bob~

My German Shepherds have a microchips. To this date, I haven't had a problem with the microchips. Also, they wear a collar with my last name and two phone numbers on it.

I don't see how it could be a problem :) Everything's fine with my dog and she has both tattoo and microchip.

thank you everyone. I will go get my dog microchip :)

I always preferred tattoos because the number was
immediately visible, and used to say that "if I wanted
shrapnel floating round my dog, I'd take it to a war
zone"; however, since the early days of the microchip
the situation has improved tremendously. Readers to
scan dogs with are far more available, and the man-
ufacturers have improved the coatings on transponders
so that there is far less risk of them moving around inside
the dog. I still like the tattoo system better (all the stuff
about fading or getting hairy etc is in my opinion greatly
exaggerated, as I only rarely saw such problems and
when I did they turned out to be down to a poor tattooist
in the first place !) - but have to say that in recent years
I did not have one problem in any dog I had chipped.

In this day and age, I would definitely use a microchip. If John Q. Public finds your dog they are much more likely to go to the local vet to check a chip. Probably 90+ % of people have no idea the tattoo is even there. We have chipped many dogs with no bad reactions what so ever.

Bill

A microchip is only useful if it is registered with a company that will be accessible...akc, home again, etc.
A tattoo is often difficult to read and even if it is readable, who is it registered with that is easily contacted? A dog picked up by animal control might scan for a chip and be able to contact an owner with a phone call... Not so easy with a tattoo.

In 17 years of having dozens of dogs with microchips, never had a problem. Even if the chip 'migrates' it's going to be picked up by scanning properly. 

The National Tattoo Registry here makes it fairly simple;
guess that isn't the case your side of the Pond ! Only a
few individual breeders have their own kennel ID tattoo
system; and most of our imports have been German ones,
where, because it was GSD people who started the Brit.
tattoo scheme, that was always fairly easy to sort out too.
But nowadays with the increase in chip usage, the introduction
of European "Pet Passports" coupled with the reduction in
dogs being Quarantined, tattooing probably hasn't maintained
the rise in numbers using it that it might have done. I still liked
it better with my own dogs, though : it was cheap, for life, not
particularly visibly obtrusive (even when it remained clearly
legible, for life, as so many did !) - and, like I said, did not in-
volve any search for A) a scanner; B) the correct scanner ! or
C) which Company it was that exhorbitant fees were being paid
to ... We still had the same problems with both systems, where
negligent or forgetful owners failed to update their addresses to
which the numbers were registered - dunno how you get over
that entirely ! But the NDTR staff have always been pretty good
at detective work. As of this year, its going to be illegal in the UK
NOT to have your dog chipped, so that probably settles the issue.