AnimaPulseMicrochips, tattoos and databases
Identifying an animal is two distinct things people constantly conflate — giving it a number, and making sure that number leads back to you.
Two acts, not one
Marking the animal means giving it a unique number and putting that number on its body — through a chip under the skin, or a tattoo.
Registering it means recording that number in a database along with the keeper's contact details.
The second is the one that works. A chip whose linked details are out of date is a number leading nowhere: the animal is found, scanned, identified… and nobody can reach you.
The chip
A transponder the size of a grain of rice, placed under the skin by a vet, usually at the neck. It does not track anything — this is the most widespread confusion. It only answers its number to a scanner held against it. Recovering a straying animal therefore depends on someone taking it to a vet, a rescue or a warden.
It is painless to read, lasts the animal's lifetime, and its number is international.
The tattoo
Long the norm, now residual: it fades, becomes unreadable on a damaged ear, and is not accepted for travel in most schemes. Animals tattooed long ago remain validly identified, but the chip is what is fitted now — and what travel documents require.
The database
Marking and registering are usually separate steps, and the database is run separately from the vet who fits the chip. Countries differ: France has a single national file (I-CAD); the United Kingdom has several approved commercial databases; the United States has no single national register at all, which is why American shelters check more than one.
Whichever applies to you, three things need declaring:
- a change of address or phone number — the most useful declaration, and the least often made;
- a change of keeper, when an animal is rehomed or sold;
- a loss, or a death.
Reporting an animal as missing in the database is a concrete act: it then shows as sought to any vet or rescue that scans it.
It is usually compulsory
Microchipping is compulsory for dogs and cats in France and in England, and required before sale or rehoming in many other places. It also conditions travel, boarding, and payout under most insurance policies. In the United States it is not federally mandated, but it is near-universal practice and often required by shelters and landlords.
What about an emergency card?
Identification covers the animal found by a professional. It says nothing to the person who has just picked it up in the street on a Sunday.
That is what AnimaPulse's emergency card is for: an A5 sheet with a QR code to cut out for the collar tag, carrying the pet's name, its chip number, your details, your vet's, its allergies and its current treatments. The QR holds plain text — it reads with no signal and no app, on any phone.
The two are complementary: the database for professionals, the tag for passers-by.
AnimaPulse is coming
The health record for your pets: vaccine and treatment reminders, vet sharing, documents scanned and pre-filled. Hosted in France, never sold.
Page updated on 7 August 2026.