KEEPING TABS ON TABBY CASTAIC ANIMAL SHELTER FITTING STRAY CATS, DOGS WITH MICROCHIPS, HOPING TO SAVE MORE LIVES.

Byline: Naush Boghossian Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - The Castaic animal shelter is implementing a new technology to help reunite the strays with their owners.

All Los Angeles County shelters are implanting microchips about the size of a grain of rice into the neck area of all dogs and cats they place in homes, cutting down on the need for identifications tags, which have a tendency to get lost.

County shelters now place almost 20,000 dogs and cats a year.

``I think it's great,'' said Lt. Rosendo Perez of the Castaic shelter. ``We should have had it a long time ago.''

Shelters have been scanning for microchips for the last few years and getting occasional ``hits'' - enough to prove to the shelters that the technology is reliable enough for them to offer.

In a simple and harmless procedure, a veterinarian or health care technician uses a syringe to inject the electronic device in the animal.

Any time a new animal is brought into the shelter, workers will run a scanner - that is about the size of a cellular telephone - over the shoulders of the animals. If the animal is implanted with the device, the microchip will respond with a short alphanumeric code that identifies the pet's owner.

The shelter will run the animal's identification code through its own computer database or that of the microchip company, which will produce the owner's name, address and phone number.

The Castaic shelter will keep the owner's information for one year. After that, owners will have to pay a onetime registration fee of $15 to the microchip company to keep the information, including updating any address and phone number changes.

Since the program was launched on June 14, the Castaic shelter has implanted microchips in about 40 animals.

County shelters hope to build up a database of names and addresses that will help track down owners of stray animals.

``It will lead us to return animals to more owners and less animals will be euthanized,'' Perez said.

Already, about 40 animals are euthanized each week at the Castaic shelter. If a cat or dog is not claimed in six days - with identification tags or an L.A. County tag, the animal is kept 10 days - it is destroyed.

The shelters will pass on the $5 cost of the microchip to those who adopt the pets, raising the adoption fee to $32.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) A microchip the size of a grain of rice can be seen in the tip of this needle, in photo at top, before being injected into an animal at the Castaic shelter. Above, shelter worker Rene Espindola shows how the pet tracking system works.

(3 -- color) Shelter worker Rene Espindola logs in a cat after it was injected with the microchip device. The shelter is placing the chips in all new adopted animals.

(4) Pet owners receive a certificate with the microchip information, which adds $5 cost to the cost of adopting a dog or cat through the Castaic animal shelter.

David R. Crane/Staff Photographer