On April 29, 2015, the Anti-cruelty Society posted this blog What’s in a name…if you don’t have proper ID?

While we are thrilled that Anti-Cruelty is promoting microchipping and ID tags as a way to get lost pets home, we would have hoped that this campaign would have been promoted soon after the ordinance was passed. There was a window of four months before the ordinance was implemented that Chicago  animal welfare organizations could have offered free and low cost microchip clinics in low income and under served areas. Also, a public campaign about the change of the stray hold should have been implemented.

It is stated in Anti-Cruelty’s blog that historically the return to owner (RTO) rate is 2% for lost pets without identification or microchips. Although this may be statistically true, in our opinion, reducing the stray hold was a knee jerk reaction that will result in the missed reunions of many family pets. Implementing more proactive procedures to return more lost pets home should have been the first approach. For your review, we have included our recommendations that were presented two years ago to the Chicago Animal Care and Control (CACC) Management team. These recommendations were never introduced.