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State will begin selling dog licenses next Friday

Courtesy: Office of Animal Welfare

The state of Delaware will start providing dog licenses next Friday, Jan. 15 at locations in all three counties at new standard rates, with one exception.

New Castle County says it will keep providing licenses with no extra fees at its county government building. Kent and Sussex Counties, meanwhile, are turning licensing fully over to the state.

A one-year license is $10 for a spayed or neutered dog and $15 otherwise, plus around a $2 fee in person and online except at the New Castle County building. And the Office of Animal Welfare's Chris Motoyoshi adds that they can't offer New Castle's former senior discount for licenses yet.

"This year our goal was just to transition everything over as seamlessly as possible, with the least amount of change," she says. "We may look at changing things in the future, but we want to keep it affordable for people."

She notes that guide dogs and dogs that served in the military will have their fees waived.

Most importantly, she says, people should know that licensing their dogs is the law -- plus, it means dogs are vaccinated against rabies, and it makes it easier to reunite lost dogs with their owners.
 

"If they get lost and they have that tag, it's easy to find the owner because they can either call the phone number on the tag, they can go to a website and plug in the license number to find the owner," Motoyoshi says. "Or one of our officers can come out and if they find a stray animal -- it's got a tag, they can get it back to their owner quickly."

Those officers and all that lost dog tracking are part of the state's new oversight of animal control. They're still contracting out for shelter services, but doing everything else in-house.

 

That includes running a website with a lost and found pet section. Motoyoshi says it's helped reunite several people with lost dogs and cats in just a week of operation so far.

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