A NORTH Yorkshire family is to be reunited with their dog who got stranded abroad after her microchip failed.

Rosemary Kind, of Tholthorpe, was distraught when she took two-and-a-half-year-old Swiss mountain dog, Shadow, to Switzerland to mate her in her country of origin, but was told she couldnot come back into the UK.

When she got to Calais to cross the Channel back to England, she was told Shadow’s microchip, which identify animals which have had all the necessary inoculations to travel, had failed, and manufacturer, Bayer, could not get information from the chip to prove Shadow was allowed to travel.

Rosemary drove back to Switzerland to leave the possibly pregnant dog with a breeder on July 22, and was told she would not be allowed to return home until January, when rules governing the travelling of pets are relaxed.

But Rosemary got a call this week from Bayer saying they had managed to retrieve Shadow’s identification from the chip after all, so she has now returned to Switzerland to pick her up.

“I’m delighted that I can go and get her,” she said. “It really didn’t bear thinking about, being away from home when her litter is born.”

Rosemary got her first Entlebucher Swiss mountain dog, Alfie, who is now five-and-a-half, from Belgium. “I read about them and utterly fell in love with this breed,” she said.

The Entlebucher is a very rare breed with only 17 recorded in the UK, so Rosemary wanted to bring a litter back so the Kennel Club could consider issuing an interim breed standard for the dogs to attend shows in this country.

A spokesman for Bayer said: “We’re very pleased obviously that Mrs Kind’s dog can go home. It’s extremely rare for this to happen, this is a very robust way of identifying a pet, which of course is very necessary. In the rare event it does happen, we try our best to work with the owner for a positive outcome.”