Crackdown on commercial dog walkers

Wednesday 24 May 2017

There will soon be a tighter lead kept on commercial dog walking businesses with mandatory licenses and insurance, as well as limits on the number of animals that can be walked by one person at one time, as part of a series of changes being looked at by Parish Constables.

The Constables' Committee, which administers the Dog Law introduced in 1961, is also working on universal microchipping and lifetime licences for dogs.

Constable Chris Taylor of St. John, and a self-proclaimed "dog lover", volunteered to supervise the work around the law because he was "...fed up with the good people being criticised because of a few bad people," and "...a small number of dogs ruining it for the majority."

The need for a tighter lead on dog walkers came to light earlier this year when Bailey, a young cocker spaniel, went missing after falling off a cliff near Grosnez Castle, prompting a three-day search. At the time of his disappearance, Bailey had been under the surveillance of the family's dog walker.

Mr Taylor commented that: "...dog walking is part of the grey economy that has grown very rapidly and as a result of this rapid growth there hasn't been any regulation to control it." He added that they wanted to ensure that all commercial dog walkers are insured and that the way to do that was through licencing them. However, there is no plan to impose any form of training as the Committee wants "...to get regulation in place without being too heavy, but at the same time being reasonably waterproof in what we do."

They are consulting on what the maximum number of dogs one walker can have at one time should be, which Mr Taylor says should be between four and six.

"There are issues when somebody collects the dog, transports them from homes to the north cliffs, the beaches or wherever they are walking the dogs. Vehicles must be safe but we have had an incident where there were 12 dogs in a car. You can imagine that this is not safe." 

Pictured: Bailey, who went missing at Grosnez

One of the main goals of the update of the 1961 Dogs Law is to introduce universal microchipping. At the moment, dogs are only registered through licenses issued by the parishes to the owners. The licenses include a description of the animal, but Mr Taylor says they can sometimes be as general as "golden Labrador" and do not enable authorities to identify the dog properly.

Mr Taylor explains: "What we want to do is take the license a stage further, so that all dogs are microchipped and when they are microchipped, they have a registered legal keeper, carer or owner who will be responsible for whatever that dog does." 

In addition to universal microchipping, the Constables' Committee is working on a life-time license which will reduce the paperwork for dog owners and parishes alike, whilst helping to finance microchips. Currently, dog owners have to pay £5 every year when they renew the dog's license while the proposed life time license would cost between £50 and £70.

"You get a puppy, it gets registered with its chip and an owner, and then you pay a license that will last for the dog's life. For a dog which lives for 10 or 12 years it would be fairly the same price as what owners pay at the moment. But they won't have to remember to renew, it will be a one-off payment, which is much simpler, less paperwork and more cost effective."

Following a public uproar on social media over the amount of dog mess left on beaches or cliff paths around the Island, the Committee is eager to introduce tighter controls. To do so, they will need to tie-in the issue of "dog fouling" as part of the Dogs Law, which Mr Taylor has described as "not straight forward." When the switch has been made, 'no-go areas' could be introduced in places such as school playing fields.

Whilst work is underway on the new regulations, it is not yet complete and no timeline has been given as to when the Law would be ready to be presented for the States to debate.