Should we licence pets?

South Africa has some sort of insatiable lust for licensing…cars, drivers, guns and if the music rights agencies get their wishes, licensing to play music will become statutory requirement. I mean, it kinda already is.

These are all worthy things to create oversight over by means of licensing. It’s great to live in a country where we know the cars are roadworthy, drivers can drive, guns are in the hands of sane people and artists are getting paid. Of course, whether that translates into reality is another story altogether.

With the situation in Bloemfontein about a child losing their life to a loose pitbull and the subsequent mass voluntary handing over of pitbulls to the SPCA, one has to ask why.

Surely, before you get a dog, you should know something about caring for animals, whether your house or yard is suitable and whether you can afford its upkeep.

You should know those kinds of details for any animal you keep as a pet.

I saw a thread that debated whether we should ban poor people from owning pitbulls as a result and while it may, on the face of it, be tempting, there’s not much actual merit there. If you know animal lovers, you’d know they’d go into debt for their pets if they had to. Money isn’t the most accurate manner of accessing whether people will make good pet owners.

Frankly, there isn’t really a good manner of assessing that but what can be done is an encouragement of self-assessment.

That really what licences are about if you think about it. I mean, I can drive without a licence illegally but still. Making me go through the process of getting one is both to test my ability to drive but also encourage me to learn how to drive properly.

How many driving schools do you think there would be if you didn’t need a driver’s licence to hit the streets? Exactly.

Similarly if you asked a person how big their yard is, they may think twice about getting that great dane.

Perhaps if you listed the common costs of keeping a pet…food, vet, time, etc…they will at least have to confront the consideration. And you’ll certainly be rolling your eyes thinking about how people will just lie on their applications.

You may be right about that. While we’ll still have the benefit of a more considered decision, we’ll have another benefit; that of ink and paper.

See, if I get a dog and then I have a dog, cool. If, however, I sign an application form for a licence that says I have a 100m2 garden and a budget of R2 000 to take care of the dog then, if later proved false, there’s some lovely criminality there.

The existence of fraud in the criminal legal framework can be such a great way of ensuring some honesty.

It’s why so many people who get caught in white collar crime get caught with fraud. It’s easy to prove and carries some serious ramifications; ramifications I’d argue that are just not worth it for getting a pet.

Practically, it’s an awful idea because it will really become another avenue for bribery in the South African context but if we could solve that, then we could implement this and give the SPCA a whole better framework to work within.

It need not be expensive. It need not be extensive. All it needs to do is take somebody who thinks getting a pet is a good idea and making them actually consider whether it is.

If for nothing else, how cool would your cat feel if they had a collar with a tag that said, “licence to purr”.

Money isn’t the most accurate manner of accessing whether people will make good pet owners.