DoggieNews: Local Animal Control Conducts Door-to-Door License Check

Local Animal Control Conducts Door-to-Door License Check

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Animal control officers in Hanover County, Virginia will be hitting the neighborhoods beginning March 1st, to conduct random checks on dogs to see if they are licensed. According to a report by Richmond.com:

"We try to do it in neighborhoods where we have received calls and concerns in, however it could be a simple random check individually or neighborhood wide as well," according to Sgt. Kevin M. Kilgore, Chief of Animal Control. "We try to not stress the animal when we conduct these visits. Instead, we seek to educate the owner and be more efficient by not spending sometimes lengthy time capturing the animal, processing the paperwork, and then impounding the animal."

Dog owners could face fines if their dogs are not licensed.

Personally, I don't like government checking up on people to see if they are lawbreakers. I usually side with freedom, small government, and personal responsibility. But the fact is that while cases of rabies in domestic animals are rare, it's only rare because state and local governments have been proactive with enforcing vaccination and licensing laws. If we allow rabies to go unchecked, it will end up hitting us in our backyards.

2 Comments:

You're so right. I spent some years as a little kid in a country where rabies was rampant. Whenever I hugged a loose dog, my mother would dump me in a bath full of Dettol(disinfectant). I don't know if she realized that this was a pointless excersize or if it was to encourage me to think twice about hugging the next dog!
Living in fear of rabies is no fun and dying from rabies is the most horrific death.
I wonder if other dog owners feel the license fee should be increased so that more inspectors can be out checking dogs and also should the fee be greater for certain breeds to discourage certain kinds of people from owning them? I'm thinking here about pit bulls etc. and some owners (just some) who have them for the wrong reasons.

By Anonymous, at 2:10 PM, February 24, 2005
i think instead of checking dog tags they should be checking on criminals roaming the street.
Most dog owners vaccinate their dogs.

By Anonymous, at 6:53 PM, February 25, 2005

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Local Animal Control Conducts Door-to-Door License Check

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