Stop the pet killers: MP calls for checks at vets
PEOPLE who are irritated by their neighbour’s pet are kidnapping them and taking them to the vet’s to be put down.
Now an MP wants veterinarians to be required to check that anyone who turns up with an animal to be put to sleep are the real owners.
James Daly, who represents Bury North, said: “Let’s just say [we] lived next door to each other and you didn’t like my barking dog – you could genuinely take that dog to a vet and there’s a very real possibility that your identity will not be checked.
“I am told that this is a problem all over the country.”
Mr Daly is preparing to present a Bill on Wednesday in response to several campaigns which have together collected nearly 230,000 signatures.
Sue Shrubsole, from Torrington, Devon, is confident her cat, Bibs, who lived with her for more than a decade, would not have been put down if vets were required to scan the microchip and check that the person who has brought the animal in is the real owner.
Bibs disappeared at the end of last year together with two of Sue’s other cats, Chico and Pagan.
She says she was later contacted by a cat charity which had been given Chico and Pagan by someone who claimed that a third cat had been put down.
“I was in bits when I found out,” said Sue.
The charity would not tell her who had brought the two cats in or which vet had put the third to sleep.
Sue added: “Bibs would certainly be alive now if the law had been there then.
“It will be nice if no one else can do that again.”