[Latest News] of Animal Welfare  

Shiba Inu: 3 Years Wandering Away from Home because the Animal Shelter did not Scan the Microchip

Found its way back home on doing the rescan for being dumped by the second owner

By ZENG, JIA-JUN

Published: March 12, 2012, by Apple Daily

NEW TAIPEI CITY— Three years ago, Ms. Liang’s dog went missing. The female Shiba Inu was captured by the dog squads and taken back to the Chunghe Animal Shelter. However, the animal shelter didn’t follow the procedures to scan the microchip for the captured dogs; instead, they treated all of them as stray dogs and soon found the Shiba Inu two new adopters right away. It was not until few days ago when the Shiba Inu got dumped again could it have chance to receive a rescan and thus find its way back to its original family miraculously.

The story was revealed later by an animal protection volunteer on the Internet, describing the tear-moving moment of the reunion and even referring its journey to the Japanese legend, Tale of Hachiko. The story has aroused high attention among the animal lovers and pet keepers, and they are desperately appealing the government to take actions on this issue. 

◆ ”I thought I would never see her again.”

“I thought I’d never find her back!” said Ms. Liang, the owner of the Shiba Inu, NONO. Twelve years ago, she bought the two-month-old NONO from a pet store as a birthday present for her husband. Since NONO means a lot to the family, they even specially took it to incept a microchip. NONO always surprise them with its lovely personality and talents. It likes to eat carrots and growl at the family to express its happiness. It even performed on TV shows. However, it was unexpected that their beloved NONO would get lost three years ago. After that, the whole family fell into frustration. They searched it frantically online and paid numerous visits to animal shelters only on the hope to find NONO back.

◆ Jumped on the owner at the first sight

According to Ms. Liang, it was not until last month that she received a phone call from the New House Animal Shelter in Taojuan, telling her the whole story of the straying NONO.

On the moment when she and her husband rushed to the animal shelter, calling NONO at the first sound, NONO suddenly turned the attitude from indifferent to alert. On seeing its owners’ faces on the first sight, NONO was just too exciting that it immediately jumped into the Liangs. All of a sudden, barks and licks; tears and laughter.

A volunteer in the New House Animal Shelter witnessed the scene at that day, feeling extremely touched but at the same time angry. He posed the story on the Facebook, and condemned the Chunghe Animal Shelter for ignoring the living rights of stay dogs. It’s hard to imagine that how many missing pets there will be to die because of their ignorance.

◆    Heat condemnation from the Internet

The article written by the volunteer has aroused huge response and discussion. More than five hundred people pressed the like button showing support. Many of the response used “tears burst out” to describe NONO’s story, and there’re also many that called for the government’s attention. 

TO this, Agriculture Department, New Taipei City Government indicated that it has strengthened the scanning systems and will never let this kind of situation happen again.

◆    The procedure of keeping and adopting stray animals

1.      According to the report from the citizen, the dog squads will take action to capture the stray dogs.

2.     After being captured, the stray dogs will receive microchip scan immediately. Those who are scanned with chips will be sent back to the owners. Those who don’t have chips will be taken pictures to put on the Internet for the owners to refer. 

3.     Within the first 12 days, the stray dogs will receive health check and vaccine injection from vets.

4.     If a dog is not claimed by the owners for more than 12 days, it will be open for adoption. If it is not adopted, it will be considered to receive euthanasia.

5.     One is required to fill the personal information and reach 20 years old for making an adoption. The animal shelters will provide free microchip inception and hydrophobia vaccine injection services.   

6.     Dogs under 3 months old can be free of microchip inception. If beyond, it’s a requirement.

Resource：Animal Protection and Health Inspection, New Taipei City Government