Sans sa médaille et sans sa puce, il serait plus difficile de retrouver la chienne si elle se perdait.

French often repeats the preposition before each item, especially when each noun has its own determiner. So sans sa médaille et sans sa puce sounds natural and clear.

You may also see:

• sans sa médaille ni sa puce = without her tag or her chip

But repeating sans is very common and completely normal.

Yes, puce often means flea, but in this context it means a pet’s microchip.

Since the sentence is about identifying and finding a dog, sa puce is understood as her microchip, not an insect.

In French, possessive adjectives agree with the thing possessed, not with the owner.

Both médaille and puce are feminine singular nouns, so French uses sa.

So sa can mean:

• his
• her
• its

Here it means its/her, referring to the female dog.

This il does not refer to a person or the dog. It is an impersonal il, like English it in it would be difficult.

French often uses this pattern:

il serait + adjective + de + infinitive

So:

• il serait plus difficile de retrouver la chienne
• literally: it would be more difficult to find the dog

Serait is the conditional of être. It is used here because the sentence describes a hypothetical situation.

The idea is:

• if the dog got lost, then it would be harder to find her

That is not presented as a fact, but as a possible situation, so the conditional is the right choice.

After si in this kind of hypothetical sentence, French uses the imperfect, not the conditional.

So the normal pattern is:

• si + imperfect, conditional

Here:

• si elle se perdait = if she got lost
• il serait plus difficile... = it would be more difficult...

So si elle se perdrait is not correct in standard French.

Because se perdre means to get lost.

Compare:

• perdre quelque chose = to lose something
• se perdre = to get lost

So a dog that becomes lost is elle se perd / elle se perdait.

Trouver means to find.

Retrouver often means:

• to find again
• to recover
• to locate after separation or loss

For a lost dog, retrouver is very natural, because the dog is being found again after being missing.

Because chienne means female dog, while chien means male dog or dog in a general sense.

Since the sentence is talking about a specific female dog, la chienne is the correct form.

A small cultural note: when used about a woman, chienne can be insulting, but for an actual female dog it is just the normal literal word.

This comes from a common French structure:

il est / il serait + adjective + de + infinitive

Examples:

• Il est facile de comprendre. = It is easy to understand.
• Il serait difficile de partir. = It would be difficult to leave.

So:

• il serait plus difficile de retrouver la chienne

The de is required by this structure.

It means more difficult, and the comparison is understood from the context.

The implied meaning is:

• more difficult than if she had her tag and microchip

French does not need to state the full comparison if it is obvious from the sentence.

Literally, médaille often means medal, but with a pet it usually refers to an identification tag attached to the collar.

So in this sentence, sa médaille is best understood as her ID tag, not a prize medal.

Yes. A natural English version would be something like:

• Without her tag and microchip, it would be harder to find the dog if she got lost.

That keeps the same grammar and meaning, but uses natural English wording.