Microchipping law welcomed

Dogs Trust have been campaigning long and hard for the introduction of compulsory microchipping for every dog in the UK — and on February 6 The Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Owen Paterson, finally made the announcement that it would become law in 2016.

In the recent Government announcement, Mr Paterson stated that all dogs in England will have to be microchipped by April 2016. In a nutshell, we at Dogs Trust together with many other animal welfare organisations have been asking government for this law for many years, simply because we believe that microchipping has proven to be the most effective way of ensuring lost dogs are returned to their owners. As such, the change in the law will go a very long way to help reduce the stray dog problem in this country.

As the UK's largest dog welfare charity we handle an awful lot of stray and unwanted dogs; last year 16 000 in all. Some of these dogs are what we term ‘hand overs’, passed on by their owners for a myriad of reasons. Many of the reasons are genuinely heartbreaking; some are not. However, those bewildered dogs which arrive in a rescue centre simply because they got lost and couldn't make their way back home, are truly upsetting.