A local veterinary clinic celebrated a milestone this week.
The Community Veterinary Clinic-Windsor Essex implanted a microchip on its 1,000th pet on Wednesday, a four-month-old tabby cat named Diego.
The clinic was opened in September 2025 with the mission to make veterinary care more accessible to Windsor-Essex pet lovers.
"That care includes offering microchips, a tiny transponder that provides pets with lifetime identification," said clinic co-founder Melanie Coulter. "This permanent identification can help get pets safely home to their families if they are ever lost."
A 2023 study presented in the Journal of Shelter Medicine and Community Animal Health reported that the odds of an animal being returned to their owners unharmed after being lost were 5.5 times higher for cats, and 2.3 times higher for dogs, compared with animals that were not microchipped.
The procedure is done during walk-in microchipping hours on Monday through Thursday, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., at the clinic on Holden Avenue, off McDougall Street, in Windsor. The cost is $25 per animal.
A 24-hour microchip scanning station is available outside the clinic.
