In the summer of 2020, a yellow Labrador retriever turned up on the doorstep of a house in Lawson, Missouri. The dog seemed quite at home, but the people who lived there had never seen her before. Fortunately, the dog had been microchipped, so they were able to locate her family — in Kansas, 57 miles away. The family had moved from the house in Missouri almost two years before. Somehow Cleo, the lab, found her way back to the place she must still have thought of as "home."
Stories like Cleo’s are very common, says José Arce, a veterinarian in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and current president of the American Veterinary Medical Association. Microchipping has made it possible for humans to reunite millions of lost pets with their families, he says, and give stories like Cleo’s a happy ending.
Often the pets make it home — or back to ...
