Christmas and New Year have come and gone, and people are getting back into the usual daily groove of work or school, just the mundane everyday life. The trees are being recycled, the decorations are back in the box waiting to collect dust for 11 months before they get brought out again next year, and thoughts turn to shed the extra pounds that have appeared on waistlines before the zeal of new years resolutions wears off.

Sadly, this is also the time of the year that hundreds of thousands of pets which were given as presents over Christmas also end up abandoned, dumped on the streets or in some quiet rural field to fend for themselves. Some of the lucky ones will survive to make their way into a human animal rescue where they will be found new homes with people who will look after them, others will find themselves ill prepared for life outside and will succumb to hunger or cold or the cold steel of a vehicle impact.

As someone who has cats, and who has dealt first hand with the poor dumped pets, it is a sad and all too common problem. Pets who are cute as puppies or kittens, are not so cute when they grow up. Others who have been faithful and loving companions for many years are simply too much trouble when they get old and begin to cost time and money with vet bills.

For too many people, the solution is to take them and dump them, on the other side of town, outside of town, anywhere not close to home. Many delude themselves into thinking that the pet which had all its needs met by its owner, and the closest it got to hunting was sniffing out a treat is somehow going to revert to looking after itself in the wild.

Some of the hardy ones do, but the sad truth is that many die, hungry, cold, injured and alone. Those who do survive may find themselves picked up by the animal wardens and if not claimed will find themselves on death row, on a 7 day wait for destruction. A few find themselves in humane no kill shelters and will be found homes, but spaces are few and new homes are fewer.

Volunteers and charities around the world pick up these abused animals, and the perpetrators are of this abuse are safe in the knowledge that in most cases they will never be found out.

What then if those pets thrown onto the rubbish heap could speak? Well, sadly, we don't have the ability to translate from Dog to English, we can't translate the meows of a hungry kitten into an address. What we can do though is to use technology to let them talk to us in another way.

For many years, cattle and livestock has been routinely tagged with either plastic tags or RFID tags. These are tiny chips, no bigger than a grain of rice, which can be implanted under the skin and then read easily and painlessly with a hand-held scanner. The chip itself only contains a serial number, but this is a system which is used around the world by responsible owners who are afraid of loosing or having their pets stolen. Implanting the chip by a professional takes literally seconds, the chips cost mere pennies, and identifies each animal uniquely. Think of it as the registration number on a car, it can identify the owner in seconds. How much more responsibly would people behave if they knew that they simply cannot dump an animal with impunity as it can be tracked back to them, dead or alive by means of this tiny chip.

In the UK, many rescues already chip all the animals that go through their establishments, ensuring that the same animal, should it be found again, can be identified and tracked back to the owner. I think it is time that this was made mandatory, that all pet animals should be chipped from birth and ownership details need to be kept updated, the same as for say a car.

It is not only abandoned animals that this will help with. Many pet owners who loose a pet because it has wandered off are never re-united with it even if it is found because it may be miles away and there is no way to establish who is the owner. By chipping, these lost pets can be returned to their loving homes.

Those of you who live in the UK can help us to raise this issue with those in Government by signing the petition at [link] If you would like to take part in an informal poll on this matter, then visit [link]

Please, lets give these poor animals a voice, let them help us find their way home or at least bring to account those callous people who find dumping an easy way to resolve their problems.