Is the Dogs Trust Chip Van visiting your neighbourhood?

The Dogs Trust Chip Van is on tour. No hot dogs or french fries from this van however - its campaigning for a change in the law.

The distinctive chip van is travelling all around the country, explaining to MPs and other politicians about the importance of microchipping. Dogs Trust wants the microchip to become a legal requirement in the way a collar and tag is.

Why is the Chip Van Tour important? Why do we want to see microchipping made compulsory?

• To improve the number of straying dogs that are returned to their owners.
• If there are fewer stray dogs as a result of being microchipped Dogs Trust will take fewer ‘8 day’ dogs from local authorities and can in turn rehome and make room for more dogs abandoned for different reasons.
• Welfare issues: cruelty, fighting, dog fouling - if a particular dog can be identified to their owner then the owner can be tracked down and dealt with.
• To support the draft DEFRA Regulation requiring all Greyhounds to be microchipped as part of the identification process.
• Dog breeding debate- the integrity of all the genetic tests that are done is completely valueless unless the animal can be identified. It is an essential part of integrity for the whole dog breeding debate.
• Microchipping is part of being a responsible owner.
• Allow the tracing of puppies to irresponsible breeders such as puppy farms.

The Chip Van Tour website will let you follow the progress of the van around the country, seeing who is supporting us and reading the blog to see what's happening.

Please note: The Chip Van is not on tour microchipping dogs! You can find out more about the process of microchipping process on the Dogs Trust website, including details of our low-cost microchipping.