Once bitten . . .
Sir: Mr Hockney is right about quarantined dogs and rabies (`Britain: a dog's life for so many', 15 June). California has, as he says, plenty of rabies among its wildlife. But domestic dogs are vaccinated, and registra- tion requires production of the certificate, as with United Kingdom car insurance. People rarely in practice get bitten, but if they do, the biters are tested, and if the test be positive (or the animal cannot be found), then the bitten get rabies vaccina- tions. Unpleasant, but in practice also rare. Your original contributor, Mr Knight Bruce, could listen more to dog-owners sans frontieres and less to interested parties such as the Quarantine Kennel Owners, to whom he thrice refers. Without quarantine but with vaccination, life would be theoreti- cally more dangerous but certainly more pleasant. To try to avoid the remote danger entirely is to produce continuous distress to dog-lovers: it is like forbidding all motor traffic in order to keep death off the road. One can overdo it.
Quarantine abolition has not caused `mayhem' in California. Why should it any- where else?
Keith Wedmore
5 Cornelia Avenue, Mill Valley, California, USA
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