Introduction

Pets are being lost on a daily basis. Each month the SPCA and AFCD receives on average over 100 and 150 lost animal reports respectively. On the other hand, the animal management centres, animal welfare organisations and the public find hundreds of stray animals each month. Currently only the data relating to micro-chipped dogs is held on a central data-base.

Many pets are not re-united with their owners (the SPCA only manages to re-unite approximately 25% of owners with their pets). This is in part due to several reasons:

• Lack of public awareness on pet identification and control

• Lack of awareness of means of reporting lost animals and measures that can be taken to help find lost pets

• No central database that can be utilised to locate owners and missing pets of all species provided they have a microchip