Saturday 29th January 2011

It has been suggested to me that the Pet Dogs’ Democratic Party should have policies relating to the travesty of the travel restrictions placed upon us. Isn’t it funny how when you have grown up with something you don’t always see the iniquity of that you have to go through. Of course the requirements that apply to us and not to humans are unreasonable. It is shocking that we have to have a microchip in order to travel. That is something that I complained very loudly about as a puppy, the size of the needle was most unreasonable and besides I’d already been tattooed. When are humans going to have a chip inserted to make the biometric testing more effective for them? What level of uproar would there be if that was made law? So, if it isn’t ok for a human, why do they think it should be compulsory for us?

Moving on from the microchip, don’t even get me started on the indignity of being force fed a worming tablet and having to be coated in tick treatment in order to be able to travel. You just see if you like it. You’ve got your hair looking its best so you can make a good impression when you arrive and then someone comes along and squirts toxic tick treatment all into the back of your neck hair. It is barbaric. Then of course there is the vet having to sign to say you are healthy to travel. In reality it would be much more pleasant to travel if every human with coughs and colds was made to stay at home rather than being allowed to sneeze and cough all over you in the course of the journey. I think here rather than abolishing the requirement I would simply like to see the same regulations applied to humans.

Perhaps the most outrageous requirement is that until you have both had a rabies vaccination and then waited a further 6 months you aren’t allowed to travel at all. This is hampering the education of every young puppy. Where at our most impressionable stages of development is our opportunity to see different cultures and learn about different ways of life? How can it be acceptable to make us stay home until we are 10 months old? Don’t even get me started on the alternative of quarantine. Can you imagine applying that to a human just in case they are going to become ill in the next 6 months?

I will have to mull over what I think the travel requirements should be, but whatever they are we demand equality with humans.