Doggy ASBOs

As of yesterday (20th October) the law was changed in England and Wales to provide an extra level of support to those dealing with problem dogs. While the new laws seem like a very good idea on paper, I have to admit to a little scepticism about the merits of the changes in practice.

I like that there is a non statutory component to the recommended way of dealing with dogs causing issues in their community (such as "acceptable behaviour contracts") because for any owner who has the dog's welfare at heart there's less of a social and financial burden to bear in being issued with a contract imposing certain conditions, rather than being taken to court. This is likely to increase compliance, rather than have the owner simply give up and have the dog rehomed or put to sleep - and practical application of the ABC by Eastleigh Council and Hampshire Police shows this to be the case. with 15 contracts in place and 15 dogs with improved behaviour that are no longer an inconvenience to their community.

My concern comes (as with any law related to dogs) with that small percentage of owners who have the dog as a tool or status symbol and treat it as disposable, rather than a member of the family. In much the same way that these dogs are unlikely to be microchipped when the law on identification changes, neither are they likely to be taken to a training class, or walked only at specified times.

If the non statutory approach does not work, then problems can be escalated via Community Protection Notices (I'm not a lawyer, but these look similar to an ASBO for people); an Injunction or a Criminal Behaviour Order (primarily where someone is using the dog for intimidation or has trained it to fight) .
The new legislation also allows the creation of Public Space Protection Orders, which prevent or require certain activities in specified areas (e.g no dogs in kids' play areas, dogs must be on leads etc) and are used much as Dog Control Orders were historically.

The down side to yet more dog-behaviour related legislation is it requires more knowledge to ensure that remedial action is taken via the most appropriate path way. For a lot of low-level irritation to the community (an owner persistently allowing a dog to foul, dogs that can escape and stray at will) these approaches create an addition to the local council or local police's arsenal, where previously their options were "do nothing" or "escalate via Dangerous Dogs Act or Dogs Act into the Court system", so in that case the advantage is fairly clear. For other issues (bites, damage) the issue is less clear cut.

That said, hopefully the new rules will decrease the cost and increase the efficiency of dealing with nuisance dogs, and thereby bring the average level of dog behaviour across the country up. One of the problems of being a responsible dog owner, or at least trying to be, is that often we don't get the benefit of the doubt because someone's mind is already made up on dogs due to unpleasant experience in the past. If this could be minimised, interactions between dog people and non dog people could be an awful lot less fraught.

Press release from gov.uk
Guidance on the administration of the new scheme

Rabies!

As my nod to the fact that it's World Rabies Day today  (the 28th September), I'm taking a look at the changes to pet travel legislation that comes in at the end of this year.

There's a very good overview of the current situation here, care of The Animal Welfare Blog but, in brief, Rabies-susceptible animals are prevented from entering the UK unless they have an import license, or are exempt from needing a licence because they are being moved under the Non-Commercial Movement of Pets Order 2011, which mainly covers animals travelling under the EU Pet Travel Rules.

As of 29th December 2014, the Pet Travel rules are being slightly updated to strengthen enforcement of compliance with the rules and to harmonise the rules across EU countries. There will be a new style of passport with more detail in it, but if the animal already has a passport it doesn't need to get a new one (unless all the treatment spaces in it get filled in). The new passport needs the vet to fill out their details on the passport, and include their contact details when certifying vaccinations and treatments.

The other changes are:

All countries in the EU are now required to carry out checks on pet movement. As such, it's likely there will be more checking of passports at other borders, and the animal must be fully compliant with the terms of the travel rules before leaving the UK. This means that the Rabies vaccinations must be carried out 22 day before the travel date (vaccination date is day 0, and then there needs to be 21 days between vaccination and travel)

A minimum age for travel - under the old rules, the puppy or kitten had to be 12 weeks before the vaccination was given, because there are no vaccinations available for animals under that age. However, individual countries could allow in unvaccinated animals under that age that were travelling with their mother or had never left their place of birth and so couldn't have been exposed to Rabies. Whether to keep this option is now under discussion, primarily because it could only apply from one Rabies-free EU state to another, and definitions of "Rabies-free" vary.

Transporting of more than five animals now needs to take place from a registered place, using an authorised transporter and with their movement logged on the TRACES system (the EU import and animal movement tracking system). However (as before) this is not required if the animals are travelling to shows though owners will now need to carry evidence of the need for the exemption (details of the show and of their entry) and may be asked to sign a declaration that the animals are eligible to make use of this exemption.[NB as of August 2014 the exact nature that this declaration will take is still being finalised]

If the animal travels separately from the owner (eg by freight) pet and owners now need to travel no more than five days apart - at the moment there is no time constraint

Finally, the definition of animals allowed to travel under the Pet Travel Rules has been updated to make it specifically the domestic dog (Canis lupis familiaris), domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus) and domestic ferret (Mustela putorius furo). This is to prevent wild animals being moved under rules designed for pet transport. In practice, this will only affect owners of hybrid animals such as wolfdogs, or owners of certain cat breeds such as the Bengal (Felis lybica) or Savannah (Felis catus x Leptailurus serval)

More detail on the changes is available from DEFRA for pet owners, and for vets from the BVA.

Compulsory Micrchipping (Part 1)

Microchipping of pet dogs is set to become law in the UK as of April 2016. It's been put forward by several bodies, including the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the British Veterinary Association that this will:

• make it much easier to reunite lost pets with their owners
• assist with the reporting of hereditary health problems
• act as a key part of the identification for a "pet passport" (and indeed has been a requirement for a dog that is being issued with travel documents since the scheme came in in 2001)
• protect the welfare of pet dogs by encouraging responsible dog ownership
• decrease the amount spent on recovering lost and stolen pets (currently £33 million a year)
• bring dogs and owners back together more quickly and effectively
• Improve the current situation surrounding stray dogs by minimising the need for unidentified lost dogs to be rehomed
• Improve traceability generally

All this seems like a great idea, and with 60% or more of pet dogs already being microchipped (the number varies a bit depending on which data set you use - SAVSNET suggests just under 60%; a small recent survey by Animal Friends thinks a little over that), there aren't that many to go until the entire population of just over 8 million pet dogs in the UK is covered. But then what?

"Microchip rfid rice". Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons -

If we look at the Dog's Trust annual Stray Dog Survey for 2013, it looks like of the 112,000 strays handled by local authorities, around 48% of them were returned to their owners. Optional data provided on the dogs (in this case filled out on around 1 in 10 animals) showed that 11% were microchipped. While that 11% might not be completely right (only 1 in 10 strays had the additional data), if it is close to correct for the data set as a whole then there is a large discrepancy between the percentage of the population of dogs that stray, and the percentage of dogs that are microchipped. All else being equal, you'd expect to see 60% chipping in the general population, and 60% chipping in the straying population. As it is, we have 60% of pet dogs with a chip, but only 11% of dogs in the straying population chipped, suggesting that unmicrochipped dogs are more at risk of being part of the "stray population" than an microchipped dog.

Of the strays dealt with by the local authority, 48% got back to their owners. For those with the optional data filled in (a data set of 20, 976 dogs), 44% were reunited when the owner contacted the pound, 40% by a microchip, 5% by disc details on a collar and 4% by microchip + tag together. What this shows is that microchipping works to get an pet dog returned to its owner - as long as the information held in the microchip database is correct.

The statement that microchipping will help with the reporting of hereditary health problems is likely to be true, though difficult to quantify. The microchip acts as a unique and permanent record of the dog's identity, and thus, data protection rights permitting, any problems can be added to the relevant breed and condition databases either by the owner or by the vet. The issue that I have with this is that these health problems occur almost overwhelmingly in pedigree animals. These animals are already identified by their Kennel Club name and pedigree and, while it's possible to envisage the substitution of one animal for another, it is unlikely to take place for the simple reason that these databases exist at all thanks to the efforts of breed enthusiasts who care about their dogs. It undermines their credibility intensely to suggest that permanently recording the dog's ID via a microchip makes it more likely that accurate hereditary data will be recorded by ensuring the dog under test is the right one.

Microchipping as a way of ensuring the right dog is being transported under the pet passport scheme is already uncontroversial, though as of later this year travellers apparently need to expect larger numbers of spot checks in Europe, and if moving more than five pets together need to make use of a professional transporter (attending shows excluded). See gov.uk guidance.

Onto the aim of compulsory microchipping that is, to my mind, most troubling. A majority of pet dogs are already microchipped on a voluntary basis, and making it compulsory will pick up the majority of the rest that come from responsible breeders or pass through a rescue. But looking at the statistics on stray dogs, it already appears that not having your pet microchipped is consistent with it being more likely to stray. Are the people who allow their dogs to stray going to have their dogs chipped? Or do we run the risk of those dogs coming into the stray system and simply being abandoned because the owner realises that they need to run foul of the law on compulsory microchipping to get their dog back? In a similar vein, rescues are already over run with Staffy-type dogs, bred to be a status dog or to make a quick buck from selling puppies. Realistically, what are the chances that this situation will change, just because an extra law is involved? These dogs are already being bred without their best interests at heart: if they are already treated as disposable I don't believe having them microchipped will change that.

The Microchipping Alliance (who don't seem to have a website online, but are referenced by a large number of involved parties, including the Kennel Club, Dogs Trust, PDSA, Blue Cross and DogLost, among others) think that annual cost savings to local authorities relating to dog welfare alone could be between £20.8 million and £23.2 million from the first year of introducing legislation. I think, from reading several briefing documents put out by the alliance member bodies, this is primarily due to speed and ease of reuniting a microchipped animal with its owner, and the decrease in number of animals that then have to go into kennels and/or rescue - as supported by bullet points 6 and 7 above, which are statements taken from the the Microchipping Alliance response to the government announcement of the introduction of compulsory chipping.

The last outcome of compulsory chipping is also worthy of further consideration. "Improving traceability more generally" could be any one of a multitude of things,  and is the subject of part 2 of this post, in which I'm looking at what happens when your lost animal is chipped and for some reason it isn't scanned, and whether compulsory chipping will change that.