By ELEANOR BLACK and ROSALEEN MACBRAYNE
Dog behaviour experts say moves to fit dogs with electronic identity tags are doomed to fail unless the tiny microchips are made compulsory.
Draft standards for implanting microchip identifiers in dogs are due to be published next month after a 10-year campaign by animal advocates.
But all dogs must be injected with the chips, which can be scanned to provide details of who owns the animal, if the plan is to achieve its aim of curbing dangerous dogs, say animal management experts.
"Microchipping would be ideal as long as there was strong legislation to back it up," said Rotorua animal control supervisor Peter Richardson.
His city has been plagued by dog attacks in the past weeks. He is now trying to trace the owners of four dogs after weekend incidents in which children were bitten at a primary school and a meter reader's ankles were nipped.
A pit bull's owners have not been found, and the six-month-old dog has been seized.
The Rotorua District Council is to go door-to-door looking for unregistered dogs.
Animal control officers will also be looking for a German shepherd involved in an attack on an eight-year-old boy last month.
A second dog involved in the attack was shot shortly after the incident and its owner was charged.
Auckland SPCA executive director Bob Kerridge said microchipping was a kindness for animals and humans.
"It is probably the most important animal control and welfare weapon we have. If you can't attach an animal to the owner, the animal suffers."
The SPCA had taken up the issue with successive Governments.
"The response we got to that was, I'm afraid, somewhat political."
His impression was that political leaders were reluctant to introduce something with "Big Brother" overtones.
Local Government Minister Sandra Lee says she wants to see the draft standards developed by Standards New Zealand before making any commitment.
They should be available in about two weeks, said project coordinator Nelson Procter.
But he said any system which was not compulsory had limitations.
"If you have a vicious dog and it hasn't been registered and hasn't been microchipped, we can write standards until we're blue in the face and it won't save someone from being attacked."
Mr Kerridge said an international standard was well established.
"There is very little work to be done. Most of it has been done overseas."
Meanwhile, a bill introduced to Parliament last year to ban the import of specific breeds of dogs considered dangerous is still on the order paper.
The Local Government Law Reform Bill (No 2) would amend the Dog Control Act 1996 to create a new category of "restricted dog." Any such dogs already in the country would have to be neutered.
Compulsory chips for dog control: experts
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