Canine
Posted: Sun 25 February, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Thoughts 5 Comments »Following on from all the recent guff about ‘dangerous dogs’ , and the latest “No Shit, Sherlock” advice that children shouldn’t be left alone with dogs, I wonder how long it’ll be before some politician or other says
“I know, why don’t we have a licence for every dog and dog-owner in the country?”
You know, like we used to have.
In theory at least, it would actually be pretty easy to manage.
First, you make it a legal requirement to have every dog microchipped at birth. (well, by the age of 8 or 16 weeks) The chip would be read only, and loaded with a unique identifier along with (possibly) information about the dog, its breed, etc. If a dog were found, or needed to be identified, the chip would be read (using already existing equipment) and queried against a national database.
In the database, you’d have the unique identifier, again the information about dog breed, age, blah blah, and also the owner details, address, contact details. Similar to vehicle license stuff, if you move, you would have to register that information with DogBase, so that information was up to date. This should be free – there’s no point making people pay to change the details, or they just won’t do it.
Any dog could be checked at any time – particularly when out in public – and if that information is out of date, or the owner is incorrect, then the owner can be fined. If the dog is out of control, or whatever, it can be held somewhere, and the owner contacted.
Is it me, or does that make sense?
Too sensible.
I suggest we give the dogs little wallets* to carry around and microchip the owners instead.
* And they’ll be called “pooch pouches”
I bet the new licenses would cost more than 37½p.
It makes a lot of sense. Can you have some individual radioactive isotope in the dog food too so that when they shit everywhere you can trace back which dog that did it? The fines are a joke, because no-one ever catches the buggers…
Funny you should say that, Pewari, it’s something that’s been getting talked about…
Sounds expensive. And unpopular with a vocal minority of people who feel they have the right to have a dog and let it do whatever they like. Just generally too sensible to work in real life.
Although if they do need it done, since you’ve already done most of the concept planning, maybe you could tender for it. Then when it goes the way of the CSA database and wastes millions of pounds, maybe you’ll be in the right place for a cut 😉