To think it is long overdue that we brought in dog licencing

Dog licences to pay for wardens.

I saw our poor postie a few weeks back scraping poo from his shoe with a stick. Utterly unacceptable.

Routine vet checks is laughable. What percentage of dogs do you recon have routine vet care?

I swear people have no idea of the scale of back yard breeding and lawlessness in this country

Thank you.

There is so much naivety on this thread around what is achievable and the costs of actually running an operation like this. Nobody is disagreeing that it would be great to clean up the streets, but some of the ideas on here are frankly, absolutely crackers.

I have a ( second?) cousin (my mums cousin) who had a car, mot, taxed and presumably insured ( not sure, we don't see him) since he was 17 and apparently never had a licence. Didn't get caught until he was in his 60s and that was only because someone grassed. If they hadn't said anything he would probably still be driving around without one.

The money isn't there to enforce these things.

Samples can be taken during routine vet checkups and added to the microchip database.

The big difference with the present method of enforcement (such as it is) is that a warden wouldn't need to catch them in the act as they do at present. Therefore the warden can issue loads of fines on one patrol without seeing a single dog. Most councils already employ other forms of civil enforcement officers to deal with parking and littering so the extra manpower may be less than you think if this gets added to their existing duties.

Yes, not everyone would get registered - fines for non-compliance can help a bit. But if people think that the only people who don't pick up are the knuckleheads with XL bullies then they are mistaken. There are plenty of people from middle class areas whose dogs do periodically go to the vets and are microchipped who fail to pick up.

I’m utterly tired of it too, OP.

I’ve had to change the route I walk my daughter to school because there’s poo everywhere. Literally everywhere. I can’t let her ride her scooter while we’re walking to school because it’s just not possible to ride it without rolling through poo. It’s disgusting.

About 5% of dogs are insured.
Lots of dogs don't go anywhere near the vet and come from a back room.

Microchipping has been the law since well before any dog was born, but 80% of dogs picked up as a stray don't have one.

Microchipping is also dead cheap, but still hasn't ever been successful

Good luck with that. How many millions of dogs are there in the country?

There is a pile of dog crap outside every other house walking down the street here. I live next to a school too. Once caught a young man allowing his dog to defecate outside the school and was told to fuck off.

You won’t ever win with dog owners unless they make it much harder to breed them and hence obtain them. 95% of dog owners shouldn’t own a stuffed one never mind a living one. I won’t get another after my girl pops her clogs because other dog owners just infuriate me.

The dog poo dna testing scheme has been piloted in several areas in the uk, but hasn't caught on nationally for several reasons.

Firstly, DNA is tricky to extract from faeces. Doable, but more expensive and easily contaminated. Has a small forensic window of time to be collected, too. You also have to be able to match the DNA. The kinds of dog owners who let their dogs shit everywhere aren't going to offer their dog's DNA to a database voluntarily. Currently there's no way to mandate that or enforce it if it's flouted. The odds of being caught would always be minuscule. To make it mandatory you'd have to bring in new legislation and the cost of enforcing that would be extremely high indeed.

So; you'd have more misses than hits meaning a significant cost for the local authority who have to pay for it while the culprit is trying to be identified.

You'd also need a significant increase in the number of dog wardens to make an impact. That's expensive.

To increase the fines you'd need new legislation. The existing legislation allows a £100 fixed penalty notice up to £1000 fine if not paid within time. Driving with no insurance has a £300 fine. Dog poo is nowhere near comparable in the eyes of law makers, so the idea that fines can be set at a point which will pay for the costs of running the scheme is wishful thinking.

There are lots of by laws that mean it's already not allowed to have dogs off in lots of areas, and fouling has always been fine able

I'm a dog owner and would happily pay for dog licences for my dogs but then you will always get the ones who always cause trouble (the type of people who don't bother to insure, tax or MOT their car for example) who won't bother to get a dog licence.
My ex-neighbour was exactly like this - a really snooty piece of work who would drive a Jaguar, wear designer clothes, have her hair cut and coloured regularly and have her eyebrows and nails done each week (all the while, looking down her nose on everyone else) - yet she drove drunk and smashed her car up, had it illegally "repaired" and drove without an MOT or insurance for over 6 months and she looked down her nose at our Border Collies and thought her Cockapoo was the bees knees, yet she let her dog crap all over the street, including leaving regular deposits right outside the local childminder's gates where the children are dropped off, her dog crapped in everyone's gardens (often as she watched) and on other people's driveways.
She never ONCE cleaned up after her dog and I know for a fact that if licences were brought in, she wouldn't get one.

I do hope dog licences are brought back though alongside the routine chipping, if only to keep the dogs themselves safe and to reduce dog theft and also discourage those who think getting a dog is like buying a hamster.

And also - you have to get an annual municipal license for your dog, and show proof of your dog's vaccinations in order to get it, including (especially) rabies. The current cost of the license is $120 per dog. No more than two dogs are allowed per address.

You also have to buy an annual license for your cat, and show proof of vaccinations.

Dogs have to wear their collars with their metal tag at all times when out, and they have to be leashed.

There are (locked) municipal dog parks that are available only to licensed dogs or guests of licensed dog owners.

I do agree that it's completely horrid though and that there should be some way of regulating it closer (but just have any idea of how you would)

My dog for example is very traceable. She's chipped, she's registered at a vet, has a pet passport, adoption certificate from a charity, she's insured, walked very publicly, she's a regular at dog training classes and sports. She's even got one of those dog dna tests!

However she was born in cupboard, her parents are siblings, the owners didn't know how many dogs they had because the breeding was so rampant. They were giving them out to friends etc, all underage, unchipped, no form of vet oversight. They were already breeching how many dogs they were allowed in the property, not getting the dogs adequate medical treatment etc but had never been prosecuted. Some of the adult dogs were clearly neglected but still walked in public.

Eventually one of the owners ended up having an ambulance called and the whole sorry saga was uncovered

There's thousands of dogs (and probably her siblings) that don't exist on any system at all.

I think this would be an enormously valuable investment in everyone's health and wellbeing. Once the dog DNA database is set up, the fines for dog fouling would need to be large enough to pay for enforcement. Which they should be, because there is absolutely no valid excuse.

License could be linked to cheaper pet insurance or vet services? It could be a condition of dog breeders to check before a puppy sale? Sure not everyone would get one but 50% would be a good start

I doubt dog license fees would pay for the cleanup, and leaving that job to local govt sanitary workers would mean people took even less personal responsibility than they do currently.

What you need is stringently enforced leash and fouling laws. I live in a community in the US where it is illegal to let your dog off leash and people show and shame photos of people walking away from their dogs' poop, on community FB pages. It's a densely populated place, and there are multitudes of dogs. It would be unliveable if people didn't clean up after them.

You shouldn't accept poor policing. It ultimately causes people to vote for extremist parties.

So this dog licence fee, which if we go by NI rules, is £12 a year and excludes certain groups of owners like over 65s, is meant to pay for:

Wages for all staff involved (admin, crew, management etc)
Machinery and equipment
A DNA database and upkeep
DNA testing
All fees associated like insurance cover, court fees etc
The gigantic water bill it would produce

I don't think it's really going to touch the sides is it.

Where I grew up, there was an imperative to have a dog licence as a dog owner with binding terms and conditions for dog-ownership. All dogs had to wear an easily observed metal tax disc on their collar when out, engraved with their personal dog ID number. There were different licencing categories such as working dogs (working sheep dogs or guard dogs on farms etc), registered hunting dogs (for annual elk culls) and ordinary pet dogs.
Dog tax was paid annually by owners to the municipality. People took it seriously and complied, but then that's Scandinavia for you.

I voted YANBU because I agree with you. However I don't think it's doable atm with the issues around police and cost etc.

Was out with my dog the other day and cleaning up after her, only to turn the corner and step in someone else's dog poo 😑

How many dogs do you think see a vet? Lots of people don't take dogs regularly and you don't want to stop dogs in pain getting emergency care

Lack of vet care and encouraging people to keep out of dogs out of exercise spaces, training groups etc is a surefire way to increase dog bite rates