About Planned PEThood of Georgia

Microchipping: What It Is and Why You Should Do It

Pets are a part of the family. If something were to separate them from you – a door is left open, your dog slips out of its c ollar, or your cat takes an unapproved field trip without you – you’d want a way to reunite with them as quickly as possible, right? Microchipping is a safe, easy, and inexpensive way to significantly increase the chances of your pet’s reunion should the unthinkable happen.

1 in 3 pets will become lost at some point in their lifetime. Tragically, many of these pets may not ever find their way home without a little help. A microchip can mean the difference between being reunited with your furry friend and never seeing them again when you come home from work. We occasionally see cats brought into our Spay/Neuter clinic for our TNR (Trap, Neuter, Return) services that are thought to be stray cats. That doesn’t always end up being the case. Sometimes these “stray” cats are actually missing pets and because of their microchip, we are able to reunite them with their owner, like in Cali’s story. We wouldn’t be able to have these happy reunions without microchips. 

Did You Know? 

Here are some insane, but true facts about lost animals:

  • Dogs without microchips are reunited with their owners only 2.2% of the time, whereas microchipped dogs are returned 52.2% of the time.
  • Cats without microchips are reunited with their owners only 1.8% of the time, whereas microchipped cats make it back home 38.5% of the time.
  • Microchipped pets are over 20 times more likely to be reunited with their families, making microchipping extremely worthwhile.
  • 1 in 3 pets will become lost at some point in their lifetime.

How Microchips Work

A microchip is a tiny electronic chip, about the size of a grain of rice, that is injected under your pet’s skin, typically between the shoulders. The procedure only takes a few seconds. While it’s not entirely painless, it doesn’t hurt any more than getting a vaccine. The microchip itself does not have a battery – it is activated by a scanner that is passed over the area. The radio waves put out by the scanner activate the chip. Each microchip has an identification number. When the microchip is scanned by a vet or shelter, it transmits this number. Animal shelters and veterinary clinics scan a pet’s microchip to get this identification number, then contact the registry in order to find contact information for the owners. The microchip is NOT a GPS device and cannot track your animal if they get lost. 

Importance of Registering Your Information and Keeping It Up to Date

HERE’S THE CATCH – the unique identification number doesn’t do any good UNLESS you register it with a National Pet Recovering Database. When you register your pet’s microchip, you should enter all relevant contact information. Remember to keep your contact information up-to-date! A microchip greatly increases the chances of your pet being reunited with you if they get lost, BUT, only if your information is up to date! Not sure which company to call? Type in your pet’s chip number in microchiplookup.org Can’t find your pet’s chip number? Come by our clinic or any clinic and just ask them to check it for you. As long as you don’t mind waiting a bit, practically every clinic will do this as a free service for you. 

Where to Get Microchips

Planned PEThood offers microchips through our Spay/Neuter Clinic and our Wellness Clinic for only $25 and that includes registration. All other veterinary clinics offer this service as well, ranging from $25-$75. 

Another great resource to help find your pet is Petco Love Lost. Petco Love Lost helps reunite lost pets with their families. Simply enter a photo of your missing pet and search our national lost and found database to find them. Learn more about Petco Love Lost.

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Mother-Daughter Superstar Fosters Approach 100th Foster Animal

Meet Tiffany and Jeanne, the mother-daughter duo, who have fostered dozens of bottle babies! These two superstar fosters have fostered 89 animals in total. That’s incredible!

Of those 89 animals, they’ve had 2 mama cats, 8 older kittens, and 3 puppies, with the remaining 76 all being bottle babies. In addition to fostering these 89 animals, they constantly help out when other fosters are out of town. That’s a lot of fostering!

Tiffany and Jeanne learned about Planned PEThood of Georgia years ago, when Jeanne, the mom, was driving by and saw an opening sign outside our building. She stopped by to ask if we took volunteers. That’s when it all began.

One February during an extremely prolific kitten season, when Tiffany was volunteering at the front desk, someone dropped off a solo bottle baby at the front door and drove away. Elizabeth, our Executive Director, started calling all of our bottle baby fosters, desperately searching for someone to care for this bottle baby. While Elizabeth was making these calls, another staff member was showing Tiffany how to feed the bottle baby. Her mom walked in and asked, “What’s that?”. Tiffany explained the situation and her mom said, “She’ll take her.”. And so, they brought home their first bottle baby. That’s when their fostering all began. Another litter showed up the next day and their first bottle baby suddenly turned into three.

A few years later, Tiffany and Jeanne switched over to fostering bottle babies full-time. Bottle babies are a tremendous amount of work, but over the years, they have created the perfect system. Jeanne takes the day shifts and Tiffany covers the nights. This way no one loses sleep. They even have their own incubator at their home for the bottle babies.

Natsu, one of their foster fails

Not only have Tiffany and Jeanne helped dozens of animals find their forever home, but they have also adopted several animals of their own. That first kitten they ever fostered was their first foster fail and became a permanent part of their family. These two do more than fostering. Jeanne constantly helps out with our Wednesday shelter days as a part of our Go Fix Georgia program and Tiffany does bottle-feeding demonstrations at various events for Planned PEThood.We asked Tiffany a few questions about her experience fostering with Planned PEThood of Georgia. Below are her answers.

Why do you continue to foster with Planned PEThood? Planned PEThood keeps calling us with kittens!

What is your favorite part about fostering? The reward of seeing a little 80g bean grown into a lively kitten and go to a forever home.

What advice do you have for someone interested in fostering? Think of being a foster like being a Kindergarten teacher. You provide the education and nutrition until they graduate to their new homes. Yes, it is hard to let them go, but there’s a new class waiting for the same opportunity to grow! Every cat that ‘graduates’ means another you can save after that!

What do you get out of fostering with Planned PEThood? I get a lot of purpose out of fostering. I’m disabled so that limits a lot of options in employment. Working with animals gave me something meaningful to do with my time. I got inspired by some of our medical challenges with the little ones to go to Vet Tech school, so I could do better and save more kittens. Turns out that my disability is a barrier there too, but I might be able to be a Vet Assistant. Fostering has also inspired me to look into building my own neonatal nursery. I hope to continue to work through Planned PEThood if that ever comes to fruition. 

Volunteers and foster parents are vital to our success. The animals depend on our efforts to place them on solid ground. If you have even a tiny bit of time to spare, a unique talent or trade to offer, or a spare bathroom/basement to occupy, consider contacting Planned PEThood today. 

Apply to become a volunteer.

Apply to become a foster home.

If you have any questions about fostering, email foster@PEThoodGA.org

If you have any questions about volunteering, email volunteer@PEThoodGA.org

Fostering and volunteering are rewarding experiences. Your life will be filled with more hair, but your heart will be happy!

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Help for 227 Gwinnett County Pets and Their Parents

Planned PEThood’s outreach team, Go Fix Georgia, teamed up with Gwinnett County Animal Welfare and Enforcement to provide free vet care and supplies to pet owners in need on Saturday, April 15th. In just four hours, 165 dogs and 62 cats received much-needed assistance including 200 FREE rabies vaccines, 214 FREE distemper vaccines thanks to Petco Love, and 152 FREE microchips!

The need for outreach events like this continues to increase unfortunately as the cost of pet food and veterinary care soars. The need was obvious as dozens of people lined up early in the morning hours before the event started. Our team ran ahead of schedule the entire time and was able to help every owner who showed up. 54% of pets had not been spayed or neutered, with most of that percentage never having been to a vet before in their life! We plan to continue working with Gwinnett County and other counties to host outreach events like this in the future. 

There were so many amazing organizations and volunteers that came together to help make this event such a success. Without their support, this would have never been possible. THANK YOU! Our Go Fix Georgia team could not have done it without our event sponsor, Fix Georgia Pets, or without the assistance of Gwinnett County Animal Welfare and Enforcement.

Event Sponsor:

Fix Georgia Pets

Other Assistance Provided By:

Gwinnett County Animal Welfare and Enforcement

Petco Love

Atlanta Humane Society

The Original Poop Bags

Department of Agriculture Spay/Neuter Tag

Make sure to check our newsletters and emails for upcoming dates! We are always looking for partner companies or individuals to sponsor outreach events. Please email tweaver@PEThoodGA.org if you or your company might be interested in giving back.

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Criminals Tried to Steal $59,000 From Our Animals

Did you see Planned PEThood on WSBTV? We love making the news, but not for this reason!

Watch the news report.

Sadly, we were the recent target of a check fraud scheme. Our checking information was stolen, and the criminals stole more than $59,000 from our bank account. In total, there were 10 fraudulent checks ranging from $4,000 to $13,000. 

Fortunately, our bank has reimbursed us for the stolen funds. We now have the costly administrative headache of closing the affected bank account, switching over automated debits to a new account, canceling automatic payments, contacting our vendors, and other tasks necessary to clear away this mess. We will incur an additional monthly cost to add protection to our new bank account.

We are working with the police and our bank’s fraud department to figure out where the initial check was stolen and who is behind this check fraud scheme. Hopefully, the criminals can be caught so they can’t do this to anyone else. 

If you can help us fight against these criminals and recoup the cost of this attack, make a donation now.

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$38,000 Van Donated to Go Fix GA Program

You may have been wondering what the big announcement was at our Party with a PURRpose event last month. Well, we are excited to reveal the amazing news!

Fix Georgia Pets has generously offered to purchase a BRAND NEW VAN for our Go Fix Georgia by Planned PEThood program.

Our Go Fix Georgia program has spayed and neutered thousands of animals across the state of Georgia. The program transports up to 60 shelter animals every week for spay and neuter surgeries, urgent medical care and facilitates transfers to rescue organizations. Within two years, we have already helped 2,000 animals.
 
Many shelters outside of the metro Atlanta area have no medical options and limited funding when it comes to the animals they care for. Prior to our innovative program, animals would be adopted without being altered, leading to an increase in the overpopulation of shelter animals. Once we started offering this program to these shelters, we were then able to offer more options. This included urgent surgeries such as limb removals. Our most recent expansion is to work with rural counties to help with pet retention through vaccine and microchip clinics. At least three counties rely on our transport each and every week to have healthy, altered animals adopted from their shelters. 
 
A few months ago we began fundraising for our dream van, and our amazing supporters helped raise close to $14,000 for the effort! Fix Georgia Pets was so inspired by the generosity of our supporters that they wanted to donate the entire cost of the van – $38,000!!! The $14,000 that was initially donated will be used to help further the growth of the program. We are extremely grateful to all of our donors and Fix Georgia Pets for their life-saving contributions! 
 
Fix Georgia Pets’s mission is to end overpopulation and senseless euthanasia in the state of Georgia. Georgia has a pet over-population crisis. Fix Georgia Pets works in the highest need communities across the state to end pet overpopulation and stop senseless euthanasia. Learn more about Fix Georgia Pets at fixgeorgiapets.org
By working together, we can save more lives. We can not wait to put our new van to work. It should be arriving mid-October.
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Giving Back to Gwinnett: Business RadioX Interview

Earlier this month Planned PEThood of Georgia was invited to participate in “Giving Back to Gwinnett,” a radio segment on Business RadioX.  

Listen to Lauren Frost, Development Coordinator for Planned PEThood, on Business RadioX.

The interview gives detailed insight into the vast array of services Planned PEThood of Georgia offers to the community. Planned PEThood is dedicated to helping pets and the people who care for them with innovative programs and affordable services that save lives.

Planned PEThood’s programs include operating a low-cost spay/neuter clinic that fixes 8,500 dogs and cats each year; offering low-cost vaccination clinics at least once a month serving more than 1,000 pets a year; and rescuing and rehabilitating about nearly 1,000 homeless pets each year. In addition to these critical services, Planned PEThood also offers community cat assistance such as humane trap loans, and its newest program, Go Fix Georgia, reaches out to rural and remote areas in Georgia in need to spay/neuter assistance. 

The first 15 minutes of the interview are dedicated to Planned PEThood of GA, and the second half of the interview features guests from Camp Dream, another Georgia based charity.

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In Loving Memory of Biscuit – “Dammit, Biscuit!”

A few weeks ago we lost our original lobby cat, Biscuit, to cancer. Please take a moment to read this sweet obituary of our Biscuit boy written by our board member, Erin.

“Dammit, Biscuit!”

Those words frequently rang out in our clinic, beginning in 2010 when we opened our doors. Figuring that an organization dedicated to reducing the euthanasia rate at local shelters should practice what it preached, Planned PEThood founders Elizabeth Burgner and Lynette Thorpe Purves adopted a young orange-and-white cat from Gwinnett County animal control, back when the “live release” rate for cats was far below today’s 95%+.

They named him Biscuit and set him up as the official Clinic Cat, and he took to the job like he’d been born for it: greeting visitors, inspecting donations, and supervising the staff. He walked around the clinic like he owned it, and he soon revealed a talent for getting into trouble. Hence: “Dammit, Biscuit!”

Biscuit crossed the Rainbow Bridge January 7, 2020 after a brief battle with cancer.

If personality dictated lifespan, Biscuit would have outlived every human who knew him. As everyone who met him can attest, Biscuit was special–in all the best ways. He was even immortalized as a bobblehead and in multiple marketing promotions and materials!

“Dammit, Biscuit!” He reveled in going where he wasn’t supposed to, sneaking into the room where we keep our barn cats who are waiting to be adopted, the kennel rooms, staff offices, the supply closet where we keep the treats. He even figured out how to open closed doors by jumping up and pressing the door lever down with his paw!

“Dammit, Biscuit!” He LOVED food and treats and would chew open donated bags if we didn’t hide them. He would beg for the clinic staff to “share” their lunch with him–and was usually successful. He wanted to sample EVERYTHING you were eating.

When a friendly, laid-back tuxedo cat was trapped in a feral colony, brought in for neuter surgery, and took up residence at the clinic because he was too sweet to be returned to the colony, Biscuit found his best friend. He and Jerome had an epic bromance, cuddling up together and then wrestling for dominance. Our staff and volunteers are giving Jerome extra cuddles.

Biscuit and Jerome helping with donation thank yous.

Biscuit developed lymphoma a few years ago–and with treatment, he fought and beat it. After losing a lot of weight and energy, he bounced most of the way back to his sassy Biscuit-y self. Recently, when he lost his appetite and turned more ornery than usual, we knew something was wrong again.

While waiting for test results, he went home with one of our longtime volunteers, Bob, for more intensive care and pain management–and all the attention he wanted. After the biopsy revealed a form of oral cancer, an oncologist confirmed that the prognosis, even with aggressive treatment, was poor.

He crossed the Bridge with people who loved him at his side.

Run free, Biscuit! Open all the doors. Steal all the treats. Eat all the food. Inspect all the boxes and bags. Welcome all the visitors. Sleep in all the beds. Go find the clinic cats who crossed the Bridge ahead of you, like Freddy and Raisin.

Dammit, Biscuit! You were a darn good cat. You left us too soon, and we miss you more than we can express.

We know many of our supporters loved and will miss him, too. We invite you to post your photos and remembrances in the comments below. We have created a Facebook album with our many photos of Biscuit also.

If you want to make a memorial contribution in Biscuit’s memory to help other animals in need, we will list all of the memorial donations on this page. You can make a memorial gift here.

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