Hi.

I did say I wasn't trying to start a debate, so I feel you should have started a new thread. Still less was I trying to provoke a rant. But...chips are fairly easy to find using...the detectors they are designed to be used with. Many a time in English Channel ports on the French side I've had to move the detector about for several minutes until I've found the chip, which hadn't registered when the detector was a centimetre away in this direction or that. The only conclusion is that they can be found using the detectors with a lot of accuracy. To call the procedure "dubious" is not something I will respond to. When I had a vet put it in, he led to me believe I had to sign something to "help find my dog if she got lost", which turned out to be a document permitting my personal information to be given to the pharmaceutical multinational called Bayer.

Obviously the vet wasn't helping Bayer for free, any more than dentists who display the name "Sensodyne" all over their front desks do so for free. He didn't even offer me a copy of what he was asking me to sign.

Many a time I've met people in veterinary waiting-rooms who have been sold lines such as that their dog needs a special drug to help them not to be so nervous on bonfire night. Yeah right. That's the sort of thing I might call "bizarre". Except it isn't really bizarre because the motivation for the behaviour of the tradesman who uses such persuasion techniques (or gets his underpaid underlings to do so) is patently obvious. Like all other professionals, vets try it on all the time.

For example, I guess most people who read this post will be aware of the con-trick about annual "booster" vaccinations, which are solely negative in their effect. It is surely obvious that removal of an easly locatable chip the size of a grain of rice will not cause great risk to my dog, nor require anything other than a short-lasting local anaesthetic - much less anaesthetic than a dog would get for, say, a tooth extraction! As for pain, she certainly experienced it when it got put in.

If the only reason you can think of for an owner to want a chip removed is theft (!), I can only suggest you get out some more and meet some more people!! (The reason I had it put in, by the way, wasn't because I had fallen for how "helpful" and "protective" it would be, but because I was emigrating and expected to return regularly to the UK. But things did not go as planned, and I am now back in the UK and expect never to leave it again with my dog). But for your information I have the receipt from when I bought her as a puppy, I have her KC registration docs in my name, I can prove my identity, I have records of when I had her chip put in, the chip itself is of course identifiable as the same one I had put in, and so on. People with different attitudes from yours are not necessarily criminals!!

The standards and practices and in some countries actual laws about microchipping are about money first and foremost. One also shudders at the thought of how a little bit of propaganda spend would get many "office-holders" of various types promoting even the mass microchipping of human beings as if it was all for our own good.

Fantasy? Well before anyone reaches that conclusion, they should consider that the European Healthcare Director of Oracle, the world's largest maker of business software, is on record as saying he wants to make microchip implants "available to everyone" in the UK. Here's a link to the article in The Times, in case anyone is sceptical.

Regards, Carrie

PS A company called Hills tends to be the one that tells vets how to run their surgeries in the UK. To practically all intents and purposes, they own BSAVA. Interestingly, it's the above-mentioned Bayer who do the same for GPs' surgeries.

PPS I have absolutely nothing against veterinary nurses, and believe you do a very worthwhile job, and most I've met have been competent and with a genuine care for animals, but I did encounter one once who insisted that dogs need meat in their diets. When I asked her why on earth she believed such a thing, she said that's what she'd been taught. I fully believed her. But what I didn't go for was the naive way she repeated such nonsense without having ever questioned it. Whereas 10 minutes reading up about it would supply any literate person with the required information. I didn't have the time to mention essential and non-essential amino acids, nor the meaning of the term "omnivore"! I've also heard the same ignorant assertion declared with apparent knowledgeableness by petshop managers. Especially if they don't sell Wafcol Vegetarian Complete dog food! Put someone behind a desk or counter and they often get in to "playing a role", thinking up reasons to justify "the way things are". Everyone knows sensation and pain are not the same thing - it's not elite knowledge only understood by nurses "and their colleagues". Nobody confuses them.

PPPS Harmeetjohal, I said in the title of this thread that she is "my dog". When you say you are "guessing" she "ain't" mine, you're calling me a liar. I do object to being abused when all I've done is ask a question in a courteous way, with no insult or offence intended to anyone, whether they would ever wish to get a dog's microchip removed or not. Please could you apologise and then we can forget what you said.