Guide
An animal's paperwork: microchip, vaccination record and passport
Three different things that plenty of people treat as one. This guide explains what each is for, who issues it, and what happens when it's missing.
Identification and travel rules differ from country to country and change over time. What's here explains what each document is for; what applies to you is a question for a vet or for your country's authority.
1 · The microchip
A capsule the size of a grain of rice, placed under the skin by a vet. It has no battery, no location and is no use for knowing where an animal is: it holds a number, nothing else. That number sits in a registry, tied to the contact details of whoever cares for the animal, and that is what makes it the safest way to get a lost animal home. A collar falls off; a number under the skin doesn't.
Any vet reads it in a second with a handheld scanner. In many European countries identification is compulsory, at least for dogs, and anyone who moves house or changes phone number has to update the registry: a microchip with old contact details gets read and reaches nobody.
2 · The vaccination record
The booklet where the vet writes and signs what was given and when. It works as a history: whoever reads it knows what has been done without having to ask. It's the document a kennel, a daycare, a trainer or a shelter asks for before taking an animal in.
It's also the easiest of the three to lose, and the only one that exists in no registry at all: if it goes missing, only the clinic that filled it in has a copy of its own notes. Photographing each page whenever it gets a new stamp costs ten seconds and saves an afternoon on the phone.
3 · The passport
In the European Union there is a document of its own for travelling with a dog, a cat or a ferret between countries. An authorised vet issues it, it carries the animal's microchip number and the record of the rabies vaccination, and it's what the border asks for.
It replaces neither the vaccination record nor the microchip: it joins them. And the exact requirements depend on the destination country and may include deadlines to meet BEFORE travelling, so the time to ask is when you start thinking about a trip, not the night before.
And on FAUNA
An animal's profile in the app holds all three: the microchip number, the vaccinations with their dates, and photographs of the documents. Out of that comes a health card with its own address and a QR code, which you can show to a vet who doesn't use FAUNA without them needing an account. The microchip number only appears on the public card if the owner turns that on.
See what the app keeps