United Responsible Dog Owner Groups Position Statement on Dog Licensing

United Responsible Dog Owner Groups opposes dog licensing.   A license is a temporary, revocable permit issued by a governmental licensing agency that allows the holder to have something, or to do something that is otherwise illegal.

If you live in a city, town, municipality, county, or state that requires dog licensing, then the act of dog ownership has been made illegal without the express permission of government.   By agreeing to license our dogs we grant the licensing agency absolute control over our animals.   Their agents can come onto our real property, and remove our personal property (dogs) without due process of law.   Ostensibly cities, counties, or states which require licensing could refuse to issue further licenses, and revoke the privilege of dog ownership.   Mandatory dog licensing was the initial step in removing dogs from our ownership.

Forced dog licensing is a taking of our animal ownership, and use rights.   Dog owners do not fully grasp the legal ramifications of licensing.   Most consider licenses to be a form of taxation. It is not. A tax is levied against the value of your property. It is a recognition by the government that the taxed item has value.

Some licenses are reasonable.   To drive upon public streets, roads, and highways your drivers license is proof of proficiency.   Drivers licenses are regularly revoked, or suspended for failure to show competency.   It’s reasonable to license for the practice of medicine, or law.   However, licensing has been carried to the extreme in the USA.   We supposedly live in a free enterprise system, yet every business must be licensed.   We must have a license to marry, to fish, to hunt, to own firearms, to own a dog.

…There is not one valid reason to license the ownership of dogs unless the city, county, municipality, or state has the eventual prohibition of dog ownership on its agenda.   The act of forced licensing is one step removed from a prohibition of ownership.   Licensing is introduced under the guise of rabies prevention.   No license has ever prevented a contagious disease from spreading.   Responsible owners immunize to prevent disease.   Dog licensing was introduced in New York City long before there was a vaccine to prevent rabies.

All law is based upon supporting, and upholding the rights granted to us under the Constitution.   Laws must be able to stand up to the Constitutional challenge.   Local, state, and federal agencies have circumvented law by initiating “regulations, ordinances, codes,” etc., which we citizens blindly agree to live under, thus making these regulations, codes, and ordinances enforceable.

Once we comply to unreasonable laws, we must ever comply.   Compliance is agreement.   If you have ever paid for and received a license to own a dog in your locale, and   refuse to re-license at the end of the period that the license was issued you can be cited, and taken to Court.   The Court can sentence you for not continuing to abide by the agreement that you entered into with the licensing agency.   It takes time for radical ideas to begin to sound reasonable.   They must be bolstered with heavy doses of propaganda.   They must be propped up with legal precedent.   Most importantly they must be acquiesced to by the people.

*See URDOG for more information.