We were very surprised when we got a call from our vet asking, ‘Where’s Rambler?’ We assumed that Rambler, our Border Collie, was in the back yard where we had let him out about an hour before. When we looked out the window at the yard we saw only our other dog, Pixie. ‘Guess again’, said the vet.

Fortunately, she knew where Rambler was because, through a series of events, lucky breaks and his microchip, she had him safe with her. We have an invisible electric fence and it turned out that the battery on Rambler’s collar which was supposed to last a year had died and gone out after only six months.

Rambler had escaped the yard and run down the street. At a busy intersection, a neighbor spotted a loose dog in danger and managed to load him into her car. She took him to an emergency vet who read the chip. The vet called my husband’s number but it was an old one so the next stage was to contact our vet whose details are registered to the chip. Because our information is current with the vet she was able to call us otherwise we would never even have known our dog had got out! We made sure to update the number on PetLink right after we picked up our adventurous son, Rambler. He was only gone a couple of hours but, boy, was he glad to see us!