Kerre Woodham: 'Idiotic' legislation woof justice for working dogs

Did anyone else pick up the irony in Helen Clark saying that in the case of microchips, there is one law for all dogs?

Channelling Dr Brash may have provided a momentary diversion for the Prime Minister, but I'm with the farmers in their grumpiness over this latest piece of idiotic legislation. Ostensibly the law which requires all puppies to be microchipped as of July 1 is going to make the streets safer. By microchipping dogs, authorities will be able to trace the owners of dangerous dogs, and they'll be fined, their dogs will be destroyed and we'll all breathe a sigh of relief.

This is of course nonsense. The good owners, the responsible owners, the ones who want their pets to be safe, will be the ones who put their hands in their pockets and pay for microchipping. The dodgy buggers with dangerous dogs who don't register their dogs now, who maltreat them and leave them to roam the neighbourhood, terrorising the locals, are hardly likely to get a chip inserted into their dog just because the law says they should.

If their dog is picked up and destroyed, they'll just get another one. And even if a chipped dog was involved in an attack, you'd have to round it up and keep it secure until the animal control officer arrived, and how many times does that happen in a dog attack?

As for poor old farm dogs, they're working animals. By the time they've herded a couple of thousand head of sheep, anticipated the boss's instructions, broken the will of a particularly obstreperous old ewe and travelled miles back to the ranch, they're too tapped-out to even think of looking for trouble. A good honest farm dog, locked in his cage, dreaming the dreams of a blameless hound, does notcause trouble.

Certainly, dogs in the bush have caused havoc among the native bird population but they're generally the castoffs of dimwitted wannabe hunters, not runaway farm dogs.

I have no objections to getting the border collie microchipped, but only because I see it as a great proof of identification.

I do not believe that microchipping will make the streets and parks safer for the children of New Zealand, and for the authorities to suggest it will is balderdash.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY