We aren’t too worried about the future of Heathrow in our house just now, nor whether fracking will come to Lancashire. It’s too hot, there’s Wimbledon to watch, and those are things over which we have little say. What is uppermost in our minds right now is the dog and whether it is going to get us into trouble with the law.
Strictly speaking the dog is meant to wear a tag with our name and address on it. But during a spate of dognappings in the next village — owners who discovered their pets had vanished were contacted by people who had “found” them, and were expected to pay a few thousand pounds’ “reward” for their return — somebody took the tag off for a while, and now nobody can find it.
A new dog tag has duly been ordered, but I did wonder whether anyone would have pulled us up on our omission. As with the now-abolished dog licence, the law on dogs — dangerous or otherwise — has a habit of being marked by its lack of observance.
After a moment’s thought I realised removing the tag had been silly. Nobody would have wanted to steal the focus of our family’s affection, our 14-year-old rough-haired jack russell, Tinker; the dogs held hostage were all pedigree.
One solution to the problem of losing the dog, or of prosecuting the dognappers, however, might be to have it microchipped — which happens to be a legal requirement from April 6 next year.
Like millions of other dog owners we seem not to have done that yet, as we were only dimly aware of this requirement. Yet it would, in theory, be a good idea. Sticking a thin, thumbnail-long chip into the loose skin of a dog’s neck can help to reunite owners with lost or stolen pets, relieving the burden on animal charities and local authorities by making owners contactable. It can also promote dog welfare by making dodgy sellers, such as owners of intensive “puppy farms”, more traceable.
Chipping might even make it easier to identify the owners of dangerous dogs — although that would suppose they had had them chipped and someone had checked, which brings us back to observance again.
Don’t get me wrong: chipping is supported by sensible people such as the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, the British Veterinary Association and others, but less than year out from this being a legal requirement there remain many questions about how this will work and what it will solve.
The first of these is simply how to get people to chip their dogs. A survey by vets last week found about a quarter of the nation’s 8m dog owners had yet to do so — though charities such as Battersea and the Dogs Trust do it free. This is probably because owners do not know it is going to be a legal requirement. This comes down to communication by Defra, the environment ministry, which isn’t very good at communicating.
Its explanation of this key legal change affecting millions of households is terse, to say the least. On the government’s gov.uk website, Defra says: “It will be compulsory for all dogs to be microshipped [sic] from 6 April 2016.”
Defra seems actually to be relying on vets and animal charities to communicate the imminent need to chip Fido, which seems to be ducking the issue. It also assumes that all dog owners look at doggy websites, which I’m not sure they do. Is anybody aware that June was National Microchipping Month? Presumably we are also meant to know when it is Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day (there is one). It seems to me there are a lot of false assumptions going on here.
It would be great if it became the norm to chip puppies before eight weeks, when they are legally allowed to be sold, and if people kept their details up to date online so we could trace every stolen dog. But as a campaign called Vets Get Scanning, backed by Sir Bruce Forsyth, is rightly saying, that isn’t what is going to happen. It points out the measures don’t go far enough and have been put in place to save money spent on looking after strays.
The measures don’t go far enough to allow stolen dogs to be traced. At present, vets, council pounds and UK ports of exit do not routinely scan pets. Nor is a microchip proof of ownership. Even if your dog is found, you may need to go to court to get it back. If you are law-abiding and someone law-abiding finds your dog, you may get it back a little faster. Otherwise it is desperately unclear what will be achieved.
Unless there is some clear threat that unchipped or stolen dogs will be found, their owners fined and dognappers prosecuted, there is no reason chipping dogs will be any more successful than the horse passport, which since 2009 has also used microchips. Travellers don’t register horses and they graze them on any land they like. No one can prove ownership and there is never any prosecution. We are heading back towards the dog licence, a law no one observed.
