You might see a lot of campaigning going on regarding our friendly mistreated pooches with people up and down the country urging everyone to boycott your local breeder and purchase an abandoned pooch instead. I mean, surely that’s the right thing to do? I think the truth is people fall in love with a breed or they just simply want a puppy, and our poor abandoned friends are left to rot in a horrible Stony cell until they eventually meet an untimely end courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood kill centre. Sounds grim right?
The truth is, we need puppies, and even though a lot of you may be against the designer breeds; a lot of responsible breeders who are working in tandem with their local vets to purge any nasty hereditary problems from man’s best friend. Whether you’re a Kennel Club fanatic or an advocate for the Heinz 57; There are still more dogs out there than there seems to be people wanting them.

Somehow, we need to keep enough dogs breeding so we don’t completely purge the domestic variety from the planet, but still maintain a small enough population so all the little canine Oliver twists can get snapped up. Some people are all about greyhounds, while others may prefer a staffy! You might not care what type of dog you just love them all, but there seems to be such a demand from certain circles that other less popular dogs are getting overlooked.  

It seems impossible to come to a solution does it not? I think I may have devised an answer, but first, lets look at some facts.

According to a report by the dog’s trust, between the years of 2016 and 2017, 66,277 stray dogs were taken in or handled. According to the same report 3% were put to sleep. That’s 1,988 dogs put to sleep.
according to the RSPCA website, officers answer 149,000 complaints of animal cruelty per year in England and Wales. The truth is, people can freely abuse, neglect and abandon vulnerable animals every day because they aren’t being regulated.

so here is what I propose, a licencing law whereby people need a permit to breed their animals. Here is how I propose it would work:

1. All owners intending on breeding their animal must apply for a permit which would be subject to house checks by the relevant authorities

2.  All owners must register their animal with a mandatory microchip code

3. Failure to prevent your animal from breeding without said permit should result in a fine

4. When purchasing a dog, a separate permit must be applied for specific to breed or type of dog the potential new owner is intending on buying (this allows the authorities to have an accurate quota of dogs that can be bred in that year. This also should be subject to home visits by a governing body.

5. The owners of animals found to be kept without permits should be heavily fined.

In doing this we can better keep track of our dog population and insure an as accurate record as possible is kept helping prevent cruelty or over-breeding.
It may not be perfect but let’s try and swap out our kill centres for castration centres.