Chip in

Rupert got microchipped yesterday. He was very exhausted from the whole experience and here he is, looking dopey and sleepy. Queeni is on the high ground -- she must exert her alphadom and was kind enough not to jump him and hump him as she normally does. She sniffed him when he came home from the vet and zeroed straight in on the spot where the chip is and then kindly left him alone.

I hate needles and I hate blood but I don't think I'm being particularly over-reactive when I think that when you're bleeding, you're hurting.

Because shortly after the vet injected the chip, Roop started bleeding. Dr P was clearly expecting it and she cleaned it up deftly.

But nobody told me anything about the blood part. Everybody just tells you that it's painless -- apart from that moment that it's injected -- and that the dog doesn't feel anything afterwards.

I don't think so. If it bleeds afterwards, it's certainly feeling something until that stops and the wound heals. The bleeding went on for quite a few hours, not a lot of it but a slow sort of seep. Still, it's blood being lost.

Mandatory microchipping for newly licensed dogs, when introduced last year, was meant to enforce responsible pet ownership more so than to return lost dogs to their owners. It meant that irresponsible owners who abandoned their pets can be traced.

It also means that some poor dog bleeds just in case you turn out to be an irresponsible shit.

I would rather that microchipping be encouraged, but not made mandatory, so owners can make a decision not to subject their pets to bleeding. Queeni is a case in point. She is sedentary and not likely to run out the door and get lost. She also has had more than her fair share of health issues and I would not subject her to the pain and blood-letting of microchipping after all that she has already been through.

I'm not against microchipping. Or I wouldn't have had Roop microchipped. But now I would like to jab that thick steel microchip applicator into the AVA guy who decided that microchipping be made mandatory and the pet accessories suppliers who make/sell/import the chips and those who blithely say that "the dog won't feel a thing" and defy them to look me in the eye as they bleed and tell me they didn't feel that.