Responsible dog owning - take the test!
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
More often than not as I am sat going about my business in the study I have the constant companion of background radio, usually talk radio as my taste in music is rarely well served by the daytime music channels and I find it less distracting. Every now and then though, the words strike home and the background noise becomes compulsive listening.
This happened to me this morning whilst listening to the Victoria Derbyshire show on BBC Radio 5Live when she had studio guest presenter, Ryan O’Meara managing director of the well known dog magazine K9. The reason that the listening became compulsive was the amount of sense that he was talking about how to increase the levels of responsible dog ownership in todays society.
The debate had been triggered by a call by the RSPCA to be given greater powers to punish the owners of dangerous dogs, which is fair enough, but I tended to agree with Ryan O’Meara that rather than than just beating unfit dog owners with a bigger stick after the event that a better and more effective solution must be to improve the education for dog owners and would be dog owners.
He even went so far as to say that some form of assessment of an would be dog owners suitability to own dogs should be introduced and that this should involve some form of dog test assessment before qualification is granted. Victoria Derbyshire then asked him to come up with five questions that may be typical of a “responsible owners dog test“, you can see these questions for yourself and have a go at them in our dog discussion forum, I think you will agree that they are pretty difficult.
Difficult though these dog questions may be, I think few could argue that by learning to answer questions such as these we would all become much better informed dog owners and that could only be a good thing. I think his idea was to have an assessment procedure similar to that for obtaining a drivers licence, which is not too unreasonable if you think about it. You need to prove that you are capable of being in control of a potentially dangerous vehicle, so why not for a potentially dangerous animal?
Obviously, no one in life wants even more hassle, assessments, red tape, legislation or bureaucracy but if it led to better dog owners and through this better behaved and safer dogs then surely it is a target worth striving for?
John
