Free Pet Tattooing Offered by County

Pet owners brought their dogs, cats and even a snake to animal clinics Saturday to launch a county program designed to increase the chances of reuniting lost pets with their masters by tattooing identification numbers onto the animals.

Although the snake was not eligible, about 300 other pets were tattooed free of charge and their numbers recorded in a computer database, said Frank Andrews, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control.

“We’ve been trying to think of some way to improve the dismal number of animals who are returned to their owners,” Andrews said. “This seems to be a good way to improve the bad image of our dogcatchers.”

Andrews said animals tattooed with license information can be traced to their owners immediately through computer records.

Because of this, he said, tattooing should also help ease overcrowding at animal shelters and prevent lost pets from ending up in research labs.

Animal control officers have been trained to look for a dime-sized green dot tattooed inside the ears of stray animals, Andrews said.

If a dot is there, then the officer knows an identification number can be found “inconspicuously” tattooed in the animal’s groin area.

The program has been so successful, Andrews said, that in its first three weeks of testing last month, seven tattooed animals who ran away from home were recovered.

Andrews said all county animal shelters soon will be equipped with tattoo equipment, and the procedure will be performed at no cost indefinitely.

More than 1,000 pets countywide have been tattooed so far.

“The procedure is relatively painless,” Andrews said. “Most bigger animals, fat animals and large animals just lay there and let it happen, but some kitties object to the buzzing noise.”

Andrews said officials expect to have about 10,000 animals tattooed and filed on computer by the end of the year.