Trovan

Socks comes back home

Within a couple of weeks, 8 cats from our street area went missing. Our cat Socks was one of them. That was in 2012. Our other cat fretted badly for him as did our three young children. Socks was 5 years old at the time and certainly knew our area so it was out of character for him to suddenly disappear. He would even meet my husband at the bus stop each night and walk him home. But now there was no Socks waiting for him.

It is now 2015 and we have just moved 700kms away from where we lost Socks. Two weeks ago I received a phone call from our old vet. They are flabbergasted. A lady has been feeding a cat for the last two months and thought she would take him to the vet to see if he was microchipped. He was. It was our Socks…and the same vet surgery who microchipped him. No one could believe it. He was in good health although a few battle-scars and grey hairs with age.

No one knows where he has been all this time…if only he could talk. He is now back with us and remembered our other cat and dog. The children have grown a lot but he has settled in well and is very cuddly once again.

We are all still in shock…but so happy we had him microchipped. I never imagined that our Socks would reappear after 3 years….wow!!!

Bruce's adventure in the UK

Bruce, our 16 and half year old Border Collie cross, decided to go on an adventure last Monday and it wasn't until 7:30 pm at night, after we returned home from work, that we realised he had gone. Kirstie, our daughter, said that she had seen him in the yard at about 4 pm so we hoped that he hadn't gone too far. But, we were concerned because we now live in the Surrey, England and being winter over here it gets dark at around 6 pm. The temperature was close to zero, we have a river behind us and many ditches full of water in the wooded common in front of us. Beyond that, was a major road.

We had been in the UK for a number of years now and every morning I take Bruce for a walk in the wooded common out front. We meander down the path and it doesn't take long before he is worn out and ready to shuffle home. Every evening we hear him sniffing at the gate when we pull up in the driveway, he is happy that we are home. So on Monday evening, we were surprised that we could not hear him sniffing and a quick check of his bed revealed he was not their either. We checked the rest of the yard but he was nowhere to be found and there was no obvious signs of a break out. This concerned us because he now suffers from arthritis and becomes disorientated when he is in unfamiliar surroundings. He no longer has the strength to push open gates or squeeze through small holes in the fence.

Knowing that we had not seen him on our drive home, we knew that he had not been run over. Our real concern was that he may have fallen down one of the ditches in the wooded common and became stranded, cold and wet. So we rounded up the family, donned our winter jackets, grabbed our powerful torch and went looking for him. We checked everywhere but to no avail and our neighbours hadn't seen him either. So, forlornly we all went home wondering whether poor Bruce would be spending the night in the wet and cold.

At 4 am Tuesday morning we received a phone call from our parents in Australia letting us know that Bruce had been found, he was safe and sound in the pound. We were relieved that he was okay. Apparantly, he had been wandering in the middle of the busy road, all confused and disorientated when 2 ladies picked him up and took him to our local vets. Unfortunately, although Bruce was wearing a collar, he didn't have a dog tag so the vets checked for a micro chip. And, yes, they found he had one but it was not a recognised UK micro chip.

So, they contacted the UK micro chipping company, Pet Detect, who recognised it was a Trovan chip and sent an email to Central Animal Records (CAR) in Australia. Bev Taylor of CAR checked their records and phoned our parents, living in Gisborne, who we had registered as alternative contacts. So, with Bev's help we had found Bruce. As soon as the pound opened on Tuesday morning, we were there to pick him up. Happy that he was warm, safe and sound and happy to have him home again. We still aren't sure how he got out but we think the catch on the gate is faulty and we now keep the gate bolted.

We are so happy we had him micro chipped before we left Australia and, with today's communication technology, we were contacted from the other side of the world within 12 hours of him going missing from home. We are now making enquiries to get his micro chip details updated so that they have a record of him in the UK - you may not be able to teach an old dogs new tricks but he has certainly taught us ...

We would like to thank Bev very much for helping us to get him back so quickly.

From
Anita Kim
(Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom)