The best and smartest thing I ever did was have my dog, Sophie, microchipped as a puppy. We left Sophie, a miniature Australian Shepherd, with a sitter when we went on vacation and, when we returned, we learned that Sophie had gotten out of their back yard. Thanks to her PetLink chip though, animal control was able to ID Sophie and contact someone to come and retrieve her from the facility. Even though we were on vacation, PetLink called our additional contact person who was able to reach us while we were away and made sure Sophie was safely returned to the sitter. Sophie had slipped out of her collar that had tags attached indicating the phone number to call so, in fact, without her microchip, she would have been lost to us forever!