This is a reminder as to the importance of putting a tag with your phone number on it on your dog’s collar. Sure, you dog might be micro chipped but that is not always going to be helpful. Last night, coming home in the dark and rain, I chanced about a large elderly black dog standing in the middle of the road at high risk of being run over. This was in Reid – a suburb with nothing much in the way of street lights, so not a good location for a dark coloured, obviously deaf, dog with no road sense to be chilling out on his own. He had a collar but no tag, so an unsuccessful door knock later, I rang Domestic Animal Services, as per the suggestion on the ACT RSPCA page.
Domestic Animal Services do not collect lost dogs after-hours. I was informed my only option was to take the dog to a vet who would (presumably) take over responsibility for him. This was not an option as I was on my bike and still a fair distance from home where the car was. Too far to get this dog to walk with me all the way home. So, I spent the next 40 minutes wandering Reid with this dog, making sure he didn’t get run over (he really had no road sense at all), and hoping he would find his own way home. Eventually I found a local dog walker who recognised him, and volunteered to walk him home.
After a 45 minute detour on the way home, in the rain, I was pretty pissed off at the owner of that dog. If he had a tag on him, I could have called the owner straight away. I also wasn’t overly impressed by the response from Domestic Animal Services.
So please, put a tag on your dog with a number that will be reliably answered on it. Otherwise you really are relying on them being found by someone with the means to transport them to a vet.
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