Saturday, November 10, 2012

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Oh, na na, what's my name?

Holy moly!  Where HAVE you been?  Sorry you guys.  Had a little rough patch there and the interwebz was the last thing on my mind for a bit.  After this, I'll download all the new pictures onto Facebook.

Something came up the other day that had me thinking of you all.  A playgroup dog had lost her identification tag.  You know the one?  Name, phone, address?  Yup, that one.

A while back I was about to make up new tags for my dogs as one of the numbers on the tags was no longer current.  I was talking to an old dog loving friend of mine while creating the tags.  She told me to make the next ones without their names on there and instead put the word REWARD, and here's why:

Side note:  I am not usually into feeding any type of paranoid frenzy but this made sense to me and I thought I would pass it on.

Horror of horrors, you have somehow misplaced your favorite fuzzy friend.  Now although anxiety ridden about their general welfare, you know that with the microchip (they ARE microchipped right?), tags, and loose dogs running amok being generally frowned upon, they can't stay missing for very long.  With those things on your side, let's pretend someone does in fact find your buddy and they start reading the tags.  They now know your dog's name and were they awful enough to simply decide keep your dog, it wouldn't be that hard of a switch.

The better thing to do, is skip the name and instead put the word REWARD in big old capital letters.  Tabitha has the kind of tag which has writing on the front and back.  The front reads REWARD and the back has my phone number, email address and street address.  As for Jimmy, his was always NEEDS SEIZURE MEDICATION and then REWARD, followed by the phone, email and street address on the flip side.


Remember, you want to tell them anything that is absolutely necessary and then let them know they have a positive reinforcement coming their way for getting in touch with you.  People love incentives and usually act upon them.  :)


Now, other than someone calling Tabitha "Reward" for a while after meeting her and reading her tags instead of asking her name, it's been a pretty fool proof plan for me.  Although, I don't have many mishaps with my dogs, so I might not be the most reliable source on the subject.  Like I said, just thought it worth a mention for the next time you make up tags.