Vanessa Williams will help promote HomeAgain, the microchipping device that reunites lost pets and their owners, after the service helped bring home her lost dog.
The “Ugly Betty” star lost her dog, Enzo, for two weeks in May. She was reunited with the 1-year-old Yorkshire Terrier after an animal shelter veterinarian 20 miles away from her suburban New York home scanned the dog and found a HomeAgain microchip, which contained a unique ID number that linked the dog to Williams.
“When Enzo was lost it was incredibly stressful, and I learned during my own experience that unfortunately 95 percent of the 135 million cats and dogs in the United States are not protected with this simple, inexpensive technology that saves pets’ lives,” said Williams in a statement. “When I received the phone call saying Enzo had been found, I was over the moon – and so thankful that I had taken the safety precaution of having Enzo chipped and enrolled in HomeAgain at my vet’s office.”
Eric Linnetz, DVM, the veterinarian who scanned Enzo and found the microchip, says one in three pets will go missing in a lifetime. “If you think your pet won’t go missing, think again,” says Linnetz, who works at the Davis Animal Hospital in Connecticut.
Linnetz urges owners not only to microchip their dogs, but to enroll them in the microchip service’s database. According to HomeAgain, half of all pets who have a HomeAgain microchip are not enrolled in the database.
To learn more about HomeAgain, visit www.homeagain.com.