Victoria Stilwell Article

[Ingrid]

Ok....... the idea was stoopid

[Santa's Little Helper]

I have never taken a dog to training classes either. I've got a shelf-full of dog training and behaviour books though.

 

However, I think, slightly reluctantly, I would support the idea of an examined dog licence, similar to the driving licence. It would be inconvenient for me personally to have to trek to a class to take a qualification, but I think it would do a lot to get the point across that dogs are things you need to prepare for, not just buy on a whim.

 

I'm not confident in the 'central register' idea. I think the costs of running it would wipe out most crossbreeds, and I'm really not sure that would be a good thing.

 

I also think there would be a thriving market in illegally bred dogs.

the problem with any sort of 'examined dog licence' is that it would only cover the person who's taken the 'test' which, presumably, in most cases would be the owner and most of the recent tragedies have occurred when the owners weren't present.

supposing there was a scheme where you took part in some sort of assessment or training to own a dog, what would happen when the dog was being looked after by a neighbour/relative who had not received the training?

the analogy of the car driving licence is very apt because once you've passed your driving test, you're allowed to drive any car (with some restrictions) however you're not allowed to be in sole control of a car until you've passed your test.

 

I still firmly believe that you need to go back even further and make the breeders responsible for every puppy they produce, and in that I would include crossbreeds as well as pedigree dogs.

 

Rather then a licence to own a dog, a central register of every dog born and papers required for their sale.

 

It may not solve the problem in the short term but hopefully if something like this happened the breeding lines etc could be checked to see if it was a genetic problem or bad upbringing.

 

i agree that a central register might help maybe together with microchipping and compulsory registration with a vet.

i don't understand why the 'costs of running it would wipe out most crossbreeds' - there's probably a good reason but i'm being a bit thick at the moment and can't think what it could be !! lol

[rip and cap]

When i say training i mean the basics. eg My partners mothers dog would jump on her and what would she do? Raise her hands. After a little advice she put a stop to this.

 

Feeding the dog a treat and the dog start snapping at the food. You make the dog wait till you say ready etc.

 

Teaching the dog authority, you start playing with the dog and also you stop the play. When you say "that'll do" the play stops etc

 

Just common sense to me and you but not to some people out there.

 

Again may be a stooopid idea but just a suggestion.

 

As with my job refreshers are a complete waste of time for people who have driven a truck for 3 years.

 

But as i said they are not going to relax bsl with out a replacement. Even if they relaxed bsl by introducing training for certain breeds only. Better than them banning breeds.

[cycas]

the problem with any sort of 'examined dog licence' is that it would only cover the person who's taken the 'test' which, presumably, in most cases would be the owner and most of the recent tragedies have occurred when the owners weren't present.

supposing there was a scheme where you took part in some sort of assessment or training to own a dog, what would happen when the dog was being looked after by a neighbour/relative who had not received the training?

 

Depends on how much you want to spend on policing it. You could require everyone who is in sole control of a dog to pass the test. I imagine it would be a widely ignored law. But then I think requiring every dog to attend training classes would probably be widely ignored also. And there is nothing to say that a dog that has attended training classes is not going to bite someone, in the right situation. I think the owners need educating more than the dogs do.

 

i agree that a central register might help maybe together with microchipping and compulsory registration with a vet.

i don't understand why the 'costs of running it would wipe out most crossbreeds' - there's probably a good reason but i'm being a bit thick at the moment and can't think what it could be !! lol

 

Presumably a central register of dogs would be funded by taking a registration fee for each dog. There would be costs to

a) setting up the database

b) checking that each dog had been given appropriate training

c) chasing people who didn't register or train their dogs.

d) checking that each dog is the dog it's supposed to be, not a ringer.

e) updating the database whenever a dogs ownership or location changed.

 

Registering cars, transferring ownership, etc is a big expensive difficult process - and cars are large obvious things which can be clearly identified from a distance, which are rarely kept entirely in private, and in which it's fairly easy to require people to display a tax disc.

 

I cannot see the non-dogowning population accepting a scheme for dog registration which is funded out of general taxation, given the likely costs. Therefore, I would expect registration of each dog to cost several hundred pounds in order to cover the cost of running and policing the scheme.

 

My guess is that this would reduce dog breeding and ownership quite a lot in the long term, if everyone who let their bitch have a litter knew they would have to either pay £££ per pup, or try to find new owners who would pay it. I think it would hit adult rescues and mongrels hardest (because they tend to be dogs where people will be reluctant to pay silly money to buy them.) That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it seems like a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut to me.

 

We do have informal commercial registration systems now, of course, but registering a microchip for someone who wants their dog registered is very different from a compulsory system where everyone has to do it. And it's not like people don't let their chip details go out of date even with our current voluntary system.

 

The more I think about this, the more I think that there is always going to be a measure of human error in the relationship of dogs and people. It seems to me that all measures suggested will be observed by the careful owners, who are not actually causing the problem, and ignored or evaded by the people who are most likely to put their dogs into a situation where damage will be done.

 

I think it might just about be do-able to try to make sure the owners have some sort of formal training to own a dog, I just can't see it being affordable to make a system where every single dog has to undergo training.

 

And of course, there are the dogs which don't respond well to a formal training environment. My lurcher Az is far from being a dangerous dog, but he has a lot of fears. It took me months to get him to respond to clicker training in our own house: I really can't imagine him passing a formal test of any kind, in a strange building, surrounded by people he doesn't know. He'd just hide under my other dog and shake like a leaf. I don't think he'd bite a person, even then, but who knows what a terrified animal will do.

[Ingrid]

But we already have a partial registration scheme for pedigree dogs run by the Kennel club !

No idea what the cost to register pups is but I doubt it's £100s, likewise it doesn't cost a fortune to register a car in the first place.

I agree that policing it would be difficult, but if a breeder could not sell puppies with out the correct papers in the first place then perhaps the fact that they are going to have to fork out for them just might make BYBs & puppy farmers think twice, and all these dogs being seized under the DDA would have paper work to show they were bought in good faith.

 

Rip & Cap I do see where you are coming from but basic obedience is just a small part of dog training, socialisation etc also need to be done, as Cycas has pointed out, I did have a rescue that had been to basic training and passed the first bit, but he was not to be trusted around stangers. He obeyed commands and learnt easily but temperament was terrible.

[cycas]

My thinking is that it's easy to get people to register for a voluntary system, where registering presumably enhances the value of the dog in the eyes of those who buy them. It would be much more difficult to get people to register their dogs for a compulsory system, as it would involve spending money for no perceived return. I think it would be more expensive to do dogs than cars, because cars are relatively easy to track uniquely, and people tend to notice if they get cloned - whereas dogs aren't obviously unique, and it's unlikely you'd know your staffy had been cloned because someone got a parking ticket for it in Guildford.

 

I can't see much point in having a compulsory registration system if there are no penalties for not registering and no effort to find people who have not bothered to register. The old dog licence was like that: it cost pennies and you could do it at the post office, and an awful lot of people, including I am afraid, my usually law-abiding family, simply didn't bother buying one. That's why they scrapped it: it was uninforceable.

 

If you had no penalties and no attempt to detect unregistered dogs, and only a microchip to track registered dogs (so only possible to check if the dog came somewhere with a chip machine) then fair enough, that would make it a lot cheaper to run than a fully-policed system where all dogs were checked - but in that case, why bother doing it at all? The only people who would buy a licence would be dog nuts like the Fugees.

Edited January 3, 2008 by cycas

[Ingrid]

I'm not looking at something that is going to be an immediate solution, but something for the future.

Suppose it was compulsory for THE PERSON WHO BRED the dog to add it to a register and pay for it, they also had to give the name of the person who they either sold or gave the puppy too.

Like with a car whoever the dog is registered to is responsible and liable for the dog, likewixse the manufacturer (breeder) also retains some responsibilty, ie if they knowingly brred from a dog with temperament problems.

So like with a car if something happens the last known owner is responsible for any costs incurred in a car's case parking tickets, speeding fines etc.

So if you pass a dog on either to rescue or someone else it is your responsibility to make sure the registraion is changed, and likewiise if you bought a dog without papers then something happened you would get fined.

If something like this had been implemented rather then the DDA then just perhaps some of the problems we have now could have been averted, because by now all dogs should have been on a database.

[Kaos]

Just read the piece in the Sun and I agree that the lady talks sense!

 

I can also see where 'Rip and Cap' is coming from (my, I'm being nice today)!

 

I think all dogs and their people should undertake some kind of formal training,

and am liking Ingrids idea of a kind of birth / registration certificate for every dog.

 

Yes, there would be a multitude of issues to sort out, and of course there would always

be people who stuck their fingers up to it, but as in all things, you have to start somewhere.

 

I'm not sure if this discussion is going down a different route to Ms Stillwell's original article...

Should we start a new thread?

[cycas]

But why would breeders, other than the most reputable and responsible ones, obey this law?

 

Example: lady with a collie bitch breeds a litter with (say) a JRT dog belonging to her uncle. She gives 2 puppies to her nephews, sells 2 to friends and puts an ad in the local paper to sell the last 2. Nobody is going to notice the existence of these dogs, as long as everything goes well, and the kind of person who breeds because she likes puppies is unlikely to assume things are going to go wrong. Maybe she gets a licence for one of the pups. If anything goes wrong, she'll say she licenced the one that caused the problem, and oops, the microchip must have moved or stopped working ...

 

OK, in theory if one of the pups later eats the person who bought a pup from the papers, she could be fined - if someone admits thats where the dogs came from, and she can still be traced, and she has money to pay the fine with. But I reckon the chances of that are pretty slim. You could get the newspapers to ask for licence numbers to run the ads, but that adds to the cost and complication again (It might be good if newspapers weren't able to run ads for living animals...?)

 

With a car, you have to tax it, to tax it you have to have MOT and insurance, you need a driving licence as well - if you don't tax it then you are likely to get caught if someone notices the missing tax disc, or if you commit any minor driving or parking offence you can immediately be traced via the numberplate - and there are loads of minor offences that are likely to get your car or licence checked, and all of those things can be crosschecked. None of that applies to dogs.

 

Animals that are tracked, like cows are now, or horses, are large obvious things that cost a lot to run and are usually kept in groups. I'm just not sure that small animals that are kept in 1s and 2s in people's houses by thousands of individuals, often quite poor, are something that can be regulated in this way.

[Kaos]

I agree with you on lots of your points Cycas, but..........

it seems that something has to happen to try and prevent silly people placing

more daft restrictions on breeds etc., so we have to begin somewhere.

 

Like I said, I've no doubt that there will be many problems along the way, but if people are determined, then it (or something like it), could work.

 

I wonder what people's views were when it was announced that you had to have a licence

to be able to drive, and then (shock, horror), you also had to pass a test to show you were

capable of driving ( oh, I can hear my step-dad going on about it as I type)!

 

I can remember when it became compulsary to wear a crash helmet, and then wear seat belts.

Sooooo many people were going to defy the new law (and did initially), but now the vast majority

conform.

Yes, there are those who will never bother with a driving licence, or wear a seat belt, register

their car to the correct address, or insure it, and of course there will be those who will never comply with any law concerning dogs (or anything else).

 

Of all people, I am usually the one who would moan about being made to do anything, and certainly when it comes to being told that I should train my dogs etc. etc., but it seems that something quite radical may need to be done / suggested to encourage the government to consider (a) re-opening the register initially, and (b) removing the ban on any breed of dog.

 

It would be great to have a magic solution, but I don't..........

do you have any ideas then?

[rip and cap]

Including a registration/compulsory chipping process i also see as a good idea. I think this is just as important as the training bit and they would need to be brought in together. This would make things more complicated for both irresponsible breeders and irresponsible owners who after a couple of weeks get fed up with their dog and boot them out on the street. It would also make potential owners give the subject of having a dog much more consideration before aquiring one. There could quite easily be a fine impossed for letting dogs stray as the owners can be easily traced.

 

I know it would also complicate things slightly for responible owners like our selves but if people knew that they would have to register their pups/dogs, carry responibility for homing/rehoming etc. Get a fine if they don't look after them properly, get fined if they don't register them, get fined if they don't attend training and all owners carry 100% responsibility for their actions and ensuring they go to classes. I think this would not only help prevent dog attacks but we would also see a long term reduction in strays.

 

Melp...you have not commented on this one.....Tell me if i am talking cr@p.

[GSDFan]

OK, my views

 

Permanent Identification and Registration

 

In principle I have no objection to a law requiring all puppies to be permanently identified either by chip or tattoo ( personally I would go for tattoo's ) and all puppies to be registered.

 

In practice I don't believe it would work.

 

If it was to be policed in the same way as the old dog licence then only responsible people would do it, and to be honest, not all of them.

 

If it is to be effectively and rigorously policed then it will cost a lot of money. If *we* expect the Government, and therefore the tax payers, to finance this then it simply isn't going to happen there are too many people who don't own dogs but do pay tax. IMO no Government would be prepared to try doing it.

 

If we expect dog breeders/rescues/owners to pay for the policing then it would IMO stop an awful lot of people being able to afford a dog. I certainly wouldn't be happy about that. IMO it would also either raise rescues costs or raise the 'required donation' for a rescue dog, again, not something I would be happy about. I'm presuming here that the registration process would largely be ignored by irresponsible breeders, byb's, people who have an accidental litter and that dogs from them that then ended up in rescue would have to be registered by the rescue.

 

Training

 

Firstly I'll consider the idea of every owner taking every dog they own to training classes.

 

Some dogs, however hard their owners try, will never be able to be trained in a formal class or among other dogs or strange people. What happens to these dogs if they don't pass the test ?

 

Some owners will be unable to attend training classes, perhaps due to the hours they work or perhaps due to the distance they would have to travel.

 

Some owners will not really be able to afford training classes and certainly would not be able to afford private one to one training.

 

I accept that it could be argued that prospective dog owners need to take the cost of training into consideration, however IMO people who are relavtively poor and don't own/drive a car should still be able to own a dog.

 

There aren't in many areas enough training classes to actually cater for all the dogs in the area.

An example : Some friends of mine have just got a puppy. They would like to take him to puppy socialisation classes. He cannot attend these classes until he is fully vaccinated and safe to go out and about which will be about January 25th. The puppy socialisation classes start on January 8th, he can't go to those so should go to the next batch of classes which start on March 25th by which time he will be over 5 months old. Too late really. As it happens in his case I've found a couple of other local puppies and will be getting them altogether for puppy socialisation and basic training, but that is just luck really.

 

To get an adult dog into classes around here is quite difficult there are fairly long waiting lists. Trainers who do one to one training are very expensive, too expensive for most people. Actually I think professional dog trainers should charge less but that is a different argument

 

You cannot, as has been previously suggested, simply attend classes once every 6 months or so. What happens inbetween classes if the handler has not understood the lessons taught at the class ?

 

Secondly, training owners, rather than dogs.

 

I suppose it would be possible to introduce training courses for prospective owners but I doubt these would do any good. You could make people attend the course, you could not however make them actually learn anything on the course. People are very resistant to information that they don't want or feel they need.

 

If training prospective owners how would you teach them to deal with problems that may arise with their dogs. Problems that they won't know about until they have the dog ?

 

Lastly on the subject of training, who would decide which methods should be taught at classes? How would that be decided ? Which trainers would be deemed suitable to teach people ? Who would decide that ?

 

 

 

I too would be interested to know DNB's position on what we are discussing

[redditchlady]

I'm not looking at something that is going to be an immediate solution, but something for the future.

Suppose it was compulsory for THE PERSON WHO BRED the dog to add it to a register and pay for it, they also had to give the name of the person who they either sold or gave the puppy too.

Like with a car whoever the dog is registered to is responsible and liable for the dog, likewixse the manufacturer (breeder) also retains some responsibilty, ie if they knowingly brred from a dog with temperament problems.

So like with a car if something happens the last known owner is responsible for any costs incurred in a car's case parking tickets, speeding fines etc.

So if you pass a dog on either to rescue or someone else it is your responsibility to make sure the registraion is changed, and likewiise if you bought a dog without papers then something happened you would get fined.

If something like this had been implemented rather then the DDA then just perhaps some of the problems we have now could have been averted, because by now all dogs should have been on a database.

 

 

Hallelujah!!!

 

Ingrid makes total sense. I only bred 1 litter, but mine were tattooed. I did a "joint" ownership. Neutering policy etc. Mine went as working trial dogs. They were all long coats. OMFG kicked the breed in the face etc. Korky's mum (Tessa) was hip scored at 2.2, Louis (Sire) was scored at 3:2 Haemophilia clear etc.

 

But What Ingrid says makes sense. Make the breeders responsible.

 

I ended up with Korky back at 9. Why??? Because I offered back up for her life. The "owners" got bored, knew I was registered on the NDTR and the Kennel club etc as joint owner. They couldn't change anything without my say so. They signed an agreement when they took the pups. I was very careful. I would never breed again, but I do have a clear conscience.

 

Yes she can be a pain in the @rse, but I bred her. I took Korky back in and I do love the bones of her. She is my responsibility. A shame a few more breeders aren't like me I guess.

 

Kazz xx

[Ingrid]

At last Jackie, someone who sees socialisation of pups as just as important as having them obedient, get that right and you have the foundations for a well balanced dog.

 

I can't see why a registration plan should be so expensive, I have no idea what the initial cost of registering a car is but we have changed a few cars last year and that was totally free.

 

Puppy farmers have got round the KC registration by starting their own DLR but if there was an official body then they couldn't do that, they would have to register their pups officially as well.

 

I think we all agree on here that it is puppy farm dogs that add to the problem, also they are traceable and supposedly regulated, surely anything that makes it less profitable and more accountable for them has to be a step in the right direction.

 

There will always be people that flout the law, I personally never had a dog licence, let's be honest at 37 1/2p it was a farce and never enforced unless something happened that involved the law, so if you had well socialised, well behaved dogs you were unlikely to get in trouble.

[GSDFan]

Socialisation is hugely important. I don't believe it is important to have a highly trained pet dog, just one that has decent manners and obeys basic commands. I think if you have a dog which is trained to have a reliable recall an instant down and 'leaves' when told that is really all you need.

 

If you have a willing owner who wants to learn attending classes these are all easy to teach, although obviously some dogs and breeds are easier to teach than others. If however you have an owner who doesn't want to learn or can't be bothered to put in any work then the dog won't learn. That I feel is what would happen with the majority of people if they were forced to attend training classes.

 

I'm not sure either how much a registration process would cost I just think it would be expensive, not so much the process but the policing of it.

 

I'm sure we'd all like to see puppy farmers put out of business and I agree that less profit for them and more accountability would be great. I still think though that the only way we'll really see them put out of business is by educating the public. People looking to buy a puppy need to be educated as to what to look for in the puppy and the place they buy it from. People who don't really give a sh!t about their dogs are going to continue to buy from puppy farmers/pet shops/byb's. Responsible caring dog owners though will respond to education.

 

I think in all cases more carrot is needed than stick