This week, I’ll answer some common questions which may help pet-owning consumers.
Q. Do I need to license my pets?
A. In a word the answer is, yes. Not all municipalities have licensing requirements. For those that do, there’s a nominal fee and a metal tag that goes along with it to be placed on the animal’s halter or collar. Cats are most often not required to be licensed, but not in all cases.
Q. So why should I license my pet?
A. License fees are not just a money grab by another government agency. The nominal fee is typically used to pay for code enforcement. That is what we used to call “the dog catcher.” If you’ve ever had to call because of a constantly barking dog, or a stray running in the street or one that may even be injured, you have accessed these fees. Code enforcement also involves a number of other city services for which such funds are used.
Q. Are there any other benefits for licensing a pet?
A. Yes, any type of indicia can help return a lost pet. My strongest recommendation over the years has been to use numerous forms of pet identification. The more valuable the pet, the more different types of identification one should have. These include tags, which can get lost; tattoos, which can become obscured; and the most important one — microchips under the skin.
Q. Aren’t microchips collecting my data and giving it to the government?
A. Microchips are inert electronic devices about the size of a grain of rice. They’re usually enclosed in glass or impermeable plastic. They do not collect or transmit any data until they are hit with a certain frequency from a scanner.
The scanner is a small handheld low energy device that sends out a radio wave such that when it contacts a microchip it will ping back a serial number and the manufacturer’s name. From here, the person holding the scanner can then look up the information and locate contact data for returning your lost pet.
Some dogs benefit from having a tag that responds to cell phone signals. These can show the GPS location of the pet.
Such tags that work with both Android and Apple products are becoming less and less expensive. Going one step further, the hunting and coursing communities often use dedicated GPS products. These can be very sophisticated, showing maps, topography and the location of your animal.
Finally, identifying animals so that they’re returned, is that multiplicity and redundancy always works better.
Q. Is it true that my pet will get fat if I neuter it?
The answer to this is both yes and no. Recent studies have shown that neutered pets, both male and female, can have a modest weight gain after being surgically sterilized. That weight gain, however, does not have to shorten the pet’s lifetime, or alter its performance. In fact, if one chooses to work carefully with the pet’s diet and activity level, there may be no weight gain at all.
When people say that their pet gained a lot of weight after being neutered, it is typically because they allowed the pet to just lie around and not do many of the same things it did before it was neutered.
The only performance altered when a pet is neutered is its breeding performance. Unless you absolutely want to breed your pet or you are under a breeder’s contract, there is no need to keep a fertile animal around. Fertile pets will go to great lengths to breed one another. Pets seeking mates often are lost or injured when breedings are not managed.
Powell, of Pullman, retired as public information officer for Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in Pullman. This column reflects his thoughts and no longer represents WSU. He may be contacted at charliepowell74@gmail.com.
