LA county mandates microchips: pet owners respond

Apr. 17, 2025 By Alexandra Evans

LOS ANGELES — Liz Biersch loves her 8-month-old chihuahua so much she wears a gold necklace that spells her name, “Sunday,” in cursive letters.

Biersch, 30, of Los Feliz, California, knows that if Sunday got out, the chances of finding her would be slim. So, Sunday has a microchip.

“I think,” Biersch said about pet owners in LA microchipping their animals, “it’s a bare minimum thing.”

There are roughly 2.4 million pets in LA homes, according to a City News Service report citing a locally based entity, Michelson Found Animals, that for years has focused on reuniting pets with their owners.

One in four is microchipped, Michelson reports. That leaves approximately 1.8 million pets unchipped.

What happens to these pets when they are lost? They take up valuable space in one of the city’s six shelters, a not-for-profit pet rescue facility or – like feral animals – roam canyons, beaches, neighborhoods and more.

In Los Angeles County overall, the return-to-home rate is but 11%, the community newspaper Eastsider reported.

Under county rules, dogs and cats four months or older must carry a chip.

In recent weeks, a Los Angeles City Council committee moved forward a plan to require chips for every single pet in the city. The plan needs full council approval. The first phase would see a one-year pilot program.

An initial cost estimate for that pilot plan: about $5.4 million, Los Angeles Animal Services estimated.

Why spend that kind of money?

In Washoe County, Nevada, in and around Reno, that agency said, officials spent $8,100 on pet chips in 2023. That prompted a 67% return-to-home rate.

The population of metro Reno is roughly 490,000 people. The city of Los Angeles itself is just under 4 million.

The notion is to scale the Washoe model up to LA. Again, why? Because a pet with a chip that gets taken home doesn’t take up space in an overcrowded shelter and, moreover, is not a risk – or at risk – on the streets.

Washoe County officials could not be reached for comment.

David Olthaar, 27, of Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands, founded PetRadar, an app that helps find lost pets after repeatedly losing a pet in his childhood and had to post “lost” signs. His app boasts a 72% return-to-home rate.

He believes the microchipping rate is so low because, he said, “Many people do not realize that microchips aren’t GPS trackers.” So, PetRadar assembled a library of educational content for “pets’ parents and good Samaritans to understand microchipping better.”

PetRadar’s return-to-home rate stands out from the county’s 11% rate because it locates animals before they end up in shelters, which Olthaar said significantly decreases the chance of return. “Some pets risk being euthanized,” he said, adding, “It’s a horrible reality.”

Pets will never stop escaping. But Olthaar said, “Microchips can truly make the difference in what happens next.”

In many nations in Europe, microchipping is mandated, he said. The follow-on: a noticeably higher return-to-home rate. If the LA city plan goes through, he said, “It could make a huge difference in bringing pets home safely.”

Laura Labelle, 60, of Los Angeles, is founder and chief executive of the Labelle Foundation dog rescue. Dog rescues differ from subsidized animal shelters because they are fully self-funded and do not house all the dogs.

She offered this perspective:

Of the one in four chipped animals in LA, not all the microchips are properly registered. This means even fewer animals have effective chips than the statistic indicates.

The Labelle Foundation takes in about 75 to 125 animals a month, about 85% from shelters. Of those animals, roughly 5% are chipped.

Labelle said they chip every single animal they come across, but the difficult part is getting people to register their chips — only about 10% of the chipped animals adopted out are registered.

To solve this, Labelle said they began registering the chips themselves after adopting out pets.

The best solution, she said, is for “registration to be done on this spot when the person is handed the dog before they take the leash and walk away.” After all, “It’s less than a five-minute process, and it makes such a huge difference.”

If the chip isn’t registered, Labelle said, “What’s the point?... It’s only useful if it has information.”

Like Olthaar, Labelle referred to legislation abroad that could serve as groundwork for LA’s plan. She said taking inspiration from England’s system could help expand registered microchipping in LA.

There, adopted dogs must be registered within 21 days or owners suffer a 500-pound fine. In reference to spay, neuter and chipping services, Labelle said, “It should be punitively based, because we have such a horrible epidemic of canine overpopulation.”

Elizabeth Oreck, senior manager at Central LA’s Best Friends Animal Society, agreed.

This nonprofit “operates the nation’s largest sanctuary for homeless animals,” per its website.

Oreck specifically noted the “safe, humane” benefits of microchipping, along with helping in “unexpected situations,” like the LA wildfires. It is standard practice for vets, shelters and rescues to scan for a chip during pet intake.

Are LA residents on the same page about microchipping?

One dog of the many at the Silver Lake dog park on one sunny Monday was not microchipped.

Bella, an Australian Shepherd, is 5 years old and works as an emotional support animal. Owner , Grecia Mendoza, 21, of Los Angeles, said, “I just never got around to it.”

Mendoza believes people do not want to pay for the chips. After all, she said, “It can get pricy.”

Everyone else disagreed, believing the cost and effort are worth it.

Running around the park was a 1-year-old black poodle named Jacques. He is from Albany, New York, and wears a thick, black custom collar with his name embroidered in bold, cursive white writing. He was the only dog who was not a rescue.

Jacques’s owner, Misha Tulek, 45 of Los Feliz, California works as a film editor. Tulek said he went out of his way to adopt Jaques to know the specific personality and temperament of the dog he was getting.

Tulek was just as selective about having his dog microchipped. He said, “It is an undeniable way of connecting him to me,” in case the dog was ever lost, stolen or separated.

He thinks others fail to chip their pets because, he said, “it’s a one in a million chance it could be useful,” so they take the risk. For him, he said, this is not an option.

Others were not so sure about having a microchipped pet. Jessica Legend, 39, lives just up the street from the dog park. She has not had a dog in about 15 years, but decided to foster after the LA fires displaced many pets. Her grey and white pit bull named Bunny, she said, “was a foster failure, immediately.”

Their bond was undeniable from the start, but before taking her home Legend had a couple questions. She thought that microchips were GPS, she said, “like an AirTag.” She had to ask Angel City Pit Bulls for clarification and learned that the chip only carries contact information. Legend was then OK with her dog having a chip.

Lindsay Heiman, 31, of Atlanta, Georgia moved to LA for her screenwriting job about 10 years ago. Around the same time, she adopted her dog, Duck, or as Heiman calls her, “my angel baby.”

Duck is microchipped, Heiman said: “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Another dog mom expressed similar fears to Biersch with Sunday. Emily Vanconett, 32, of Silver Lake, California, said her childhood beagle would run away repeatedly but would always come home. She said it was only, “upsetting,” one time, when the dog ran into a swamp late at night and would not come out.

She fears her dog, Bunny, would not be so obedient in a bustling city. So, she is chipped.

Vanconett said, “We get to do what we can to make their lives better. Their safety is part of that.”

[Shelter representative from The Labelle Foundation, Best Friends LA, PetRadar, Michelson Found Animals or LA Animal Services]