April 18-24 is National Pet ID Week

Sadly, tags on their collars couldn’t save the lives of . But she is making a heartfelt plea for dog owners to make sure their pets can be identified to spare anyone else her anguish.

Patch readers know the story of Jade and Nia, who disappeared from their Fairfax Station home on Feb. 1. Despite valiant efforts to locate them, the dogs were found dead in a pond near their home in early April.

While their dog tags couldn’t save Jade and Nia, Farrish is using the occasion of National Pet ID Week, April 18-24, to urge all dog owners to make sure their dogs wear proper identification and even better, have microchips implanted.

“I absolutely cannot stress that enough,” Farrish told Lorton Patch. “Collars are not enough anymore.”

Collars can be removed or lost, and Farrish says she knows of a Lab who was taken but reunited with its owner through a microchip.

And even though it didn’t help her dogs, “it’s better to have all that ID then nothing at all,” she said. “If you truly, truly love them, make sure they can be found.”

Deb Adler with the Newington-based cocker spaniel rescue group Oldies But Goodies said new owners must provide a collar with an ID before an adoption is finalized.

“When Good Samaritans call our rescue’s phone line with a lost dog, many of them are not microchipped or the microchip has not been updated with the owner’s current contact information. Unfortunately, the same can be true for ID tags,” said Adler, a board member. “Owners must be vigilant about updating the information for the best possible outcome to occur.”

Microchips contain a unique ID number and are injected between the shoulder blades of a dog. Petco in Burke offers twice-monthly vaccine and microchip clinics and they are popular, said manager Tyler Marrone.

“Microchipping is the only true way for your pet to be recovered,” he said. “You can’t lose it.”

Oldies but Goodies partners with the micro-chipping company HomeAgain, which says that registered microchips give lost pets their best chance of returning home. HomeAgain cites a study in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association that found that only about 22 percent of lost dogs that enter animal shelters are reunited with their families. But 52 percent of families that had dogs with microchips got theirs back.

Adler also provides these statistics from HomeAgain: one in three pets will become lost at some point during their life, and the American Humane Association estimates that over 10 million dogs and cats are lost or stolen in the United States every year.