Safely Home: Gotta Track That Smell!

My darling Beagle/Basset Hound mix, Maggie, can’t go outside without her nose being glued to the ground! One day we were in the back yard playing and the phone rang. In the time it took me to go to the porch to grab the phone, Maggie found a smell, dug her way out of the yard and was off! I jumped in the car but wasn’t able to catch up with her nose! THREE days and a whopping 46 miles later, Maggie called it quits and decided to nap on a porch that was not her own. Animal control was called and off she went to the slammer! We had been frantically posting on all media sources we could, having put up posters and driven for hours and miles looking for our darling.

Here’s the thing. Maggie used to have a collar, which had gone missing on her jaunt, but she did not have a microchip. How could I prove she was mine? The only thing that saved me was describing her distinct markings and the fact that when I arrived at the shelter she nearly broke down the kennel to get to me. Maggie was dirty, hungry and tired with a few little boo-boos that the vet said were caused by thorns. The vet said that because Maggie is a Beagle/Basset Hound mix, her scent drive is very high and that if she gets on a scent, her brain will turn to mush and she won’t be able to find her way back!

So, guess who now has a microchip? At least now we have considerable peace of mind that in the event that Maggie does a quickie escape again, she will be able to come back home a LOT easier because her chip identifies us as her owners. Her big brother is chipped and has been for many years because he could jump our fence! Not once did we suspect that our little 21-pound darling would be the one to escape and really require the chip she didn’t yet have!