New York native Giuseppe DiBella was shocked when he received an unexpected phone call this month — his missing toy fox terrier had been found in Ocala.
The terrier, Nika, had been missing for almost two years.
“I was not expecting Nika to show up so far away,” said DiBella, who lives in Newburgh, New York. He had contacted law enforcement, posted fliers and shared her microchip number online to no avail.
“I never gave up looking for her because I’ve had her since she was a puppy and knew someone would take care of her,” he said.
Nika’s microchip ultimately led to her return.
Abby Rivera, a vet technician for A Family Veterinarian, found the small dog outside a friend’s doorstep and brought her in for a microchip scan.
She was underweight but in good spirits, Rivera said in an email.
After scanning for the rice-sized chip between Nika’s shoulder blades, Rivera found out which company manufactured the chip. Using the company, she was able to locate DiBella.
Microchipping services are “the only thing that can assure you that you will get them back,” DiBella said.
For $15, the Alachua County Humane Society can microchip community pets wrote Abigail Amlong, staff veterinarian at the Alachua County Humane Society, in an email.
“There are countless stories of pets returned to owners after varying lengths of time of being lost or stolen,” Amlong said.
The benefits of having a microchip greatly outweigh negative effects, she said, which are typically minor.
“Microchipping is extremely important — it is useful for identifying and contacting owners of lost pets as well as proving ownership in cases of discrepancy,” she said.
[A version of this story ran on page 4 on 9/24/2014]
