This message is addressed to dog lovers and dog haters alike! There has been continuing concern about dangerous dogs – sometimes seen as harmless dogs with dangerous/irresponsible owners – take your pick!
There is a discussion starting about the value of putting a micro chip in every dog and giving the police greater powers to intervene when a dog is thought to be uncontrolled.
You can send in your views to the following link but I would also like to hear them as it may well come to this House at some point in the future. There is interest in this proposal within all political party’s.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/dangerous-dogs/index.htm (from 9 March).
As someone who’s taken animals in and out of the country, all my pets have microchips anyway. The side benefit is that if a pet is lost then it can be identified via the microchip and returned or, if the animal is killed on the road, at least one can learn the fate of the animal and stop wondering.
Bad behaviour in dogs is generally the fault of the owner – dogs are pack animals and will do what they are told by pack leaders. I’ve seen owners who are not in proper control of their dogs (the dog considers that it is in charge) and yet, when faced with a person who knows how to assert authority over a dog, the dog will test and then accept that the person is higher in the pack order and behave for that person, even though the dog will still misbehave for its owner.
I suppose if “terrorism” got much worse, instead of requiring IDs on ’em, you could require microchips in ’em.
Dave must be referring to a dog whisperer, who understands the way dogs think and has superior powers of control over the animals who/which respect him for it.
Swarms of bees used to do it for me, and one tap on the hive, and the queen would crawl up my hive tool and say “Hi!” then crawl back in again, on command. Out of 40000 bees in a hive, THAT is discipline. (No! No Clive! I did not use a whip; I used a little smoke).
Animals do have souls,(including bees) and I some times wonder whether some humans do.
Why! By Lord Soley’s method, if it were all
properly computerized you could check the owner’s identity by looking up the microchip
of the dog.
Aim a digi-identity gun at the dog and you get its serial number, like the scanner at the supermarket.
No! No! No! Better still; require everybody to have ID cards, which can be scanned with a scanner gun at 15m. Then you know who somebody is without going near him.
Do the same for dogs, and if it does not have a microchip, shoot it.
Why should dogs be allowed to exist without microchip technology?!
If micro-chipping dogs is such a strong deterrent against criminal behaviour, why don’t we microchip humans?
Just think the crime that will vanish overnight with the insertion of a tiny lump of silicon.
That’s fascinating! (Dave H Comment – 2nd paragraph) I wish someone had told the MP’s in the Parliamentary Labour Party about this when I was the chairman!
That’s the problem – in theory you were not the pack leader (given that chairman and party leader are separate posts) so you didn’t have that authority, or at least they didn’t think so. Unlike between dogs, it’s not quite the done thing to go up to an MP and sink your teeth into his throat until he submits.
In street circles, some dogs have taken the place of knives in our youth.
We have to go deeper and ask why do our youth feel it necessary to carry a knife, gun or own a dog ?
Why do they feel they need this protection when the Labour party is spinning statistics of falling crime. The fact is that an awful lot of crime especially in youth goes unreported mostly through fear of repurcussions.
Dog`s are not to blame owners are and I can see where this is going, we cannot deal with the root problem so let`s legislate and delve more into peoples personal lives.
What I find amusing is the idea that ALL dogs will need to be registered [and taxed ?]. As with Banning Mobile Phones when Driving, this will be another law which doesn’t impinge on sensible people and will be ignored by the idiots.
Still, I think the micro-chipping of dogs will prove a useful ‘proving ground’ for when the next Government decide to microchip people because the fight against illiberal legislation is steadily being lost.
This can really be slip into two issues: licensing/chipping and insurance.
Licensing/Chipping: There is a fairly clear case for this. Most police officers do not have the specific knowledge required to identify dangerous dogs/mixes. As a result, they are unable to confiscate them. If the dogs were chipped/registered then their breed would have to be declared (removing some dangerous dogs immediately) and, as people with dangerous dogs are unlikely to register them, the police would have a clear excuse for confiscating an un-chipped animal, whether they are certain it was illegal or not. All they would need is a chip scanner. As long as the police used this power with discretion then I do not see this as a problem. Also, in the case of a registered animal that attacks someone, chips would clearly identify whose responsibility the animal is (thereby allowing a smoother prosecution in the case of negligence).
Insurance: This strikes me as another sop to the UK’s growing compensation/blame culture. This would penalise law abiding dog-owners while owners of illegal dogs would simply ignore it.
http://www.governing-principles.com
Liability insurance for dogs has been around for a long time. My parents had cover for their dog over thirty years ago, although I daresay the premiums were cheap back then and not subject to tax.
I believe that in law, if your dog runs out in front of a car and damages the car, you can be held liable for the cost of repairs because you failed to keep your dog under control.
There is a difference between liability and insurance. I believe the owner is liable and licensing would make this liability clearer. If the car owner wants to press for damages he is more than welcome.
However, compulsory insurance is a step too far. It feeds into the idea of “it not going to hurt anyone, they’re insured”. Compulsory insurance is necessary in instances where the average uninsured person would not be able to afford the typical damages payout (for example, when someone crashes their car). Most people can afford to pay for the level of damage a dog can inflict. As such, I maintain my view that the insurance is a sop to the UK’s claim culture.
http://www.governing-principles.com
I don’t see illegal breeds/irresponsible owners will get their dogs chipped, far better not to in fact as it will make the police job harder. It looks like just another law that will be an expense for the law abiding owner and a administrative cost for the state to administer/enforce but which those whom it is aimed at will completely ignore. Anyone know the likely premium to work out a back of an envelope amount the treasury will raise on the insurance tax?
Administrative: We had it before in the form of Dog Licenses (until 1987)
Chipping: Not actually that expensive for an owner. Some places do it for as cheap as £11 apparently.
Illegal breeds/irresponsible owners will not get chipped: That’s actually the point. It allows police to confiscate a dog on the spot rather than trying to work out whether its an illegal breed. To check a chipped dog, all you need is a scanning gun (like in a supermarket), to check unchipped dog you need hours of follow up (Who’s the owner? Are their any vet records? Can we get in a specialist to identify the breed/mix)?).
Everything I’ve read about this says that the police don’t go after dangerous dogs because they don’t have the specialist knowledge and it’s too hard because of the vast amount of paperwork needed. It it’s simply illegal to have a chipped dog, you don’t need to go through any of this to get a potentially dangerous dog off the street. You just need a scanner.
You have to allow for chip failure as well – the pet passport regs cater for this happening, although sometimes at great expense to the owner. If you’re going to require dogs to be chipped then, while the police may impound an unchipped animal, there needs to be a procedure to recover that animal by providing proof of chipping and, as a last resort, finding the defective chip in the animal and having it removed for analysis. In the importation case, that’s still cheaper than paying for six months’ quarantine – the chip is read by the manufacturer, the ID confirmed and the animal can be re-chipped and released from quarantine now that its identity is confirmed.
Dave H: Good point. There would need to be paper documentation so that you can prove the dog was chipped in case of failure.
Also, if you claim the chip has failed, the police should also be expected to look you up on their licensing database before confiscating your dog. This way, if your dog is registered as having been chipped, it would be possible for police to use the discretion to allow you to go get your dog to be rechipped yourself without going through the hassle of confiscation.
http://www.governing-principles.com
A micro chip for every member!
That bloke who was so unjustly arrested would have got one in his tea at the police station.
One down; 649 to go!
There is interest in this proposal within all political party’s.
In the forward of a HoC research paper:
In Opposition Labour gave a commitment to introduce a dog registration scheme, a course of action rejected by the former Government.
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp98/rp98-006.pdf
How would you quantify this cross-party interest?