Wednesday 9 April 2008

Q: When is your dog not your dog?

A: When you've bought a microchip instead.

Hello.

I'm afraid that our modern life has led me to begin sounding like a bad first-year philosophy tutorial, but: we recently had to fill out a change of ownership form for our dog. Our dog that we have owned since he was legally saleable. He came fully microchipped, you see, and we were given all the papers, food, certificates etc etc etc ad nauseum that one could want to collect with a 9 week old puppy.

Fast forward a year, and...we decided to register him with the National Pet Register, just to ensure that if he did wander, he would have every chance of getting delivered back to us. That was when we made The Discovery: our doggie's microchip number is different to the one on his paperwork. The vet confirmed which chip number was right, by scanning the pooch. Then came the rigmarole of calling the National Pet Register to correct the problem.

Which can only be corrected by filling out a change of ownership form.


Am I the only one who thinks this is seriously out of kilter? I bought a dog, not a microchip. I was against the chip anyway - unnatural, controlling, etc etc - but went along with it because of various regulations and flat out 'no, you may not buy this puppy without a microchip' -type statements. And now I find that I really did buy a microchip, and that the outer casing of furry dogginess and slobbery, enthusiastic goodness doesn't actually rate a mention in this whole debate.

*Sigh*

What a strange world.

Lucky it's got things like dogs in it.



1 comment:

Jodi said...

What a pain but oh so worth it for that gorgeous pup!