If a fella were to get into any legal trouble for doing this it may cost a little money but can easily be beaten just by the verbiage of that statute itself, no one would “unnecessarily” freeze brand a dog, it is “necessary” to help in deterring theft, same argument could be thrown up about removing dewclaws, docking tails, and ear cropping, which are all performed every day by state licensed veterinarians all over the state of Florida, now all those are “unnecessarily mutilating” and in 99% of instances where it’s done is strictly for cosmetic reasons and personal preferences by the owner, just use common sense and don’t go posting all over social media what your doing, or telling a lot folks who don’t need to know, do what you gotta do in a humane manner and be done with it, once it’s done it’s done and if they don’t catch you in the act or have hard evidence of cruelty against you such as a video of you actually performing the branding then they have no leg to stand on...
Goose87 I agree that I believe it could be won in a court of law and I thought about contacting a lawyer and try and push the issue but in some cases I believe it is best to just leave a sleeping dog lye. I even tried to explain to the person at the Dept of Ag that the reason I was wanting to do it was for a visual identification purpose and that I already have my dogs (most of them) microchipped but that is only good if they show up at a vet or the pound. I wanted something so that if someone saw the dog and was thinking about steeling him the brand might would make them think twice about it. They cannot see the microchip in the dog you know. I also hunt in the national forest and there are a lot of people from all over the state and from AL and GA that hunt down there and I have never lost a dog to theft in 40 years but you just never know. I did have to run a truck down one time back when we had beep beeps and take my dog out of the mans box, he said oh I was going to bring him to you, REALLY???
I try to abide by the rules, I take very good care of my dogs and I spend a lot of money doing so, just ask my vets that see my dogs. I take pride in being able to control my dogs and I call them off hogs all of the time due to not having permission on some properties and that is how I get to hunt a lot of land that I hunt is because I can and do stop my dog at the property line and the land owners have seen it first hand and will tell you they just cannot believe it. I was wanting to register my brand with the state so that I was following all of the rules but I could tell that I was talking with a person in Tallahassee that had no clue about the hunting or cattle world so I thought is was best to just try and remove myself from the conversation. I live in a rural part of FL and outside of a very small town so I shouldn't have any issues but I don't want or need the doggie police coming around my place snooping around.
I just wanted to through this bit of info out there so that I know a lot of people put stuff on FB and that would be a huge no no. I would love to post pictures of my hunts but honestly I don't post anything on FB very often just for this reason. I don't want people knowing my business. If I post a picture of a hunting trip I always cut the hog out of the picture.
