The United States Department of Agriculture has collected all of the clauses in all of the State laws that have proved their merit under the test of time and has formulated them into a model dog law. which it recommends to the consideration of all true friends of the dog - friends who believe in perpetuating the good that is in dogs and in eradicating the evil.

This model law embodies the idea that the tax assessor should list the dogs; that unspayed females should be subject to a high tax; that all dogs should be required to wear collars and tags bearing the names of their owners; that all dogs, unless under leash or reasonable control of their owners, should be confined from sunset to sunrise: that sheep-killing dogs may be killed by any one. without liability to owner; that any dog running at large upon the enclosed lands of a person other than the owner of the dog may be killed, at the time of finding him, by the owner of the land, his agent, tenant, or employee; that dog owners shall be liable to the county for all money paid out for damages done by their dogs; that sheep owners may set out poison on their farms after public notice of such intention.

Such a law aims as much at the protection of the dog that is entitled to a good name, and has an owner who knows and lives up to his responsibilities, as it is for the protection of the community itself. It espouses the cause of the good dog against the homeless, ill-kept wretches that are as much a misery to themselves as they are an evil to the community.

The law has regard for every right of every owner of a dog who respects his neighbors' rights, and seeks only to curb the carelessness of that owner who has a dog - whether pedigreed or mongrel - that is allowed out of bounds. And. in passing, it must not be forgotten that the only thing worse than a mongrel out of bounds is a pedigreed animal running amuck; for blooded dogs are more intense in their make-up than the mongrel, and therefore more destructive when they "go off the reservation".