Nguyen Van Dung from the HCM City Sub-department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine said since 2018 his agency has been training local officers in catching loose dogs as per requests shown in documents by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and HCM City People’s Committee.

The groups in charge of catching dogs running loose carry out plans set by district authorities.

In HCM City, 79 out of 322 wards and communes have set up these groups. People who discover unleashed dogs can report to local authorities.

Under current regulations, fines of VND1-2 million are being imposed on people who do not have their dogs and cats vaccinated against rabies, wearing a muzzle or kept on a leash, and unattended in public places. The fines are considered reasonable to deter violators.

The current regulations say that pet owners have to bear all costs if their free-roaming dogs are seized, including costs for raising and destroying the dog. If a dog or cat bites or scratches a person, the pet owners must pay compensation to the victims.

Asked about the proposal on putting chips on dogs and cats to control pets, Dung said the HCM City agriculture department has submitted a statement asking for a temporary regulation on dog and cat management. 

One of the points of the document is a proposal on microchips for more convenient management and identification of pets’ history traceability (pet owners, vaccination history, species…etc).

If the provisional regulation gets approval from municipal authorities, his agency will give advice to the HCM City Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to apply the regulation on a trial basis in inner districts. 

The pilot application will be reviewed after a certain period before it can be deployed on a large scale throughout the city. In general, putting chips on dogs and cats is encouraged, especially for valuable pets.

Dung said there are 184,000 dogs and cats being raised in 106,000 households. The dogs and cats raised in suburban districts account for 34 percent, and each household raises 1.74 dogs or cats. Of these, 29,000 are hybrid dogs (16 percent of total dogs).

Local authorities encourage people not to raise big and aggressive dogs, such as American Pit Bull, Spanish Perro de Presa Canarios, Argentinian Dogo Argentinos, Japanese Tosa and Brazilian Fila Brasileiros.

Bach Duong