A free pet microchipping program by the city of Aurora will continue for another year after the city was awarded a grant from national nonprofit Petco Love, officials announced Sunday.
Aurora residents can call 311 to set up an appointment to get their pet microchipped for free through the program. Microchips are small implants put under a pet’s skin that contains contact information for the pet’s owner when read by a certain device.
“Microchips play an integral role in lost pet reunification,” Kameron DeBoer, Aurora Animal Care and Control manager, said in the city’s recent press release officially announcing the grant. “A microchipped pet is three times more likely to return home to their pet parents.”
In 2024, over 1,000 pets found as “strays” entered the city’s shelter, and only 30% were able to be returned to their owners, according to the city news release.
“Thanks to Petco Love, we will be able to offer free microchips to our community, supporting their safety and helping us keep pets in their homes with their families who love them,” DeBoer said in the news release.
Petco Love’s $2,500 grant to the city of Aurora is one piece of the nonprofit’s recently-announced $15 million investment in local organizations across the country, which is “part of our commitment to create a future in which no pet is unnecessarily euthanized,” Susanne Kogut, president of Petco Love, said in the city news release.
Since 1999, Petco Love has invested around $400 million in adoption and other lifesaving efforts for pets, according to the city news release. The nonprofit also helps find homes for pets with the help of Petco and more than 4,000 organizations across North America, such as the city of Aurora’s Animal Care and Control division, with around 6.8 million pets adopted so far.
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Petco Love gave Aurora’s Animal Care and Control division a grant last year, too, which supported the microchipping of 250 pets without any cost to their owners, DeBoer told the Aurora City Council’s Finance Committee last month.
Last year’s grant funds were also used to buy a microchip scanner and cage for Aurora University, she said, so that the animals found there do not need to come to the city’s shelter.
While last year microchips were mostly given to pets by appointment only, city staff this year plans to also host events and target certain communities that need it most or that are lower income, according to DeBoer.