Owners are often surprised that an imported dog's microchip 'works' — a scanner reads it at the first vet visit — yet would not reunite them if he were found. The chip itself is only a number carried under the skin. What matters is which database that number is listed in, and whose name and phone number sit beside it. A foreign chip almost always lists him in his country of origin, under a breeder, exporter or previous owner.
Start by getting the number read and recorded
Book a vet visit soon after he arrives and ask the practice to scan him and write down the complete chip number for you — all of it, exactly as read. Foreign chips may have a different number of digits from domestic ones, and a single mistyped digit makes the record useless, so check the written number against the scanner display yourself. While you are there, ask whether the chip sits where it should; chips occasionally migrate under the skin, and knowing yours has moved to a shoulder tells future scanners where to sweep. Keep your import paperwork — passport or travel documents, breeder or rescue contract, vaccination records — together with the chip number from this visit, because the registration steps that follow may ask for them.
Register the same number with a database at home
The step owners miss is that you do not replace the chip or get a new one fitted; you register the existing number again, this time with a recognised microchip database in your new country, in your own name. Contact the database, give them the full number, your details and his description, and confirm back exactly what is now held against that number: your mobile number first, since that is the phone a finder or vet will call, plus your address and an emergency contact if you have one. Keep any old listing in the origin country as well if the database there allows it — two doors to you are better than one — but the local listing is the one a local vet, warden or rescue will actually search when he is found on your streets.
Test the system before you need it
At his next routine vet visit, ask the practice to scan him again and tell you what contact details come up, as if he had been brought in as a stray. That thirty-second test catches the common failures: a number transcribed wrongly, a registration that was started but never completed, an old phone number still listed. Repeat the check whenever you change your number, move house or change his keeper, because databases only hold what they were last told. If he travels back and forth with you, confirm the number is also recorded in his travel documents exactly as scanned, so a border or airline check matches the chip to the paperwork without argument.
Keep his identity in one place he carries with him
Registration is the invisible half of his identification; the visible half is what he wears and what you can show. His collar tag should carry your current number, and your own records — chip number, database name, import papers, vaccination history — should sit together in one packet you can produce for a vet, a border official or a new boarding kennel without hunting through drawers. That is the role KinsLe built the Pet Pass for: his verified ID card, holding his identity and your contact details in a form that is easy to show anywhere he goes.