The history of dog tags

The other day our dog's off-leash park tag arrived. For an annual fee of $38, you can be assured you will not be stopped by the Dog Police and issued a ticket. No one's ever asked to see Birch's license, but that's not how we do things here, is it? It's the law, so you get the tag.

The tag looks as if it could've been issued in 1937. Just a piece of metal with stamped letters. Nothing fancy.

I took off Birch's collar — something that made him trot out of the room, since taking his collar off usually means that the dreaded bath is coming — and swapped out the old tag for the new. That's when I realized he had four tags, which seems like a lot. But there's a story behind each one.

First, some history. When did dog collars start having tags?

We know the Romans' dogs had collars. The mosaics and paintings of Pompeii show dogs with collars, sometimes adorned with metal decorations. It's not a stretch to imagine they had name tags.

Roman soldiers had dog tags, as we call them now, the signaculum was a piece of metal with the soldier's name and vitals. A prized pet also might have had its owner's info in case the dog got loose, although it would be hard to fit a phone number in Roman numerals.

Today, dog tags still have a military association. Identification tags for soldiers have been widely used for years, but they became mandatory in World War I. Combine that with mass conscription, and you have the perfect conditions for making a slang term that's ubiquitous and long-lasting.

Wearing ID tags likely made sense to a soldier in 1917. Like Fido back home, he was wearing his information around his neck.

The Minneapolis Morning Tribune's first mention of dog tags pops up in 1878, where a notice to the public puts things in stark terms:

"DOG NOTICE. Office of City Clerk, Minneapolis, May 7th, 1878.

"Owners of DOGS are hereby notified that the License on Dogs for the ensuing year is now due and payable at this office. Call and get your receipts and tags.

"A dog killer has been appointed, and will soon commence his duties."

That ought to hasten those reluctant to tag their dogs. But Minneapolis was behind the times: Fredericksburg, Va., had instituted dog licenses in 1853. Still, we were ahead of New York, which didn't get around to it until 1894. We were all way behind Holland, which issued the first dog license in 1446.

The next tag on Birch's collar: the rabies vaccination.

Mentions in the Minneapolis Tribune for "Rabies tag" suddenly appear in 1945 in the want ads for lost dogs, indicating a possible new requirement. If so, it was a town-by-town law, since the state of Minnesota does not require rabies vaccines. Some towns are dropping the rabies tag requirement. Anoka canceled its license-and-rabies tag requirements in 2020. One less note in the dog-collar jangle.

The third tag: The actual license. It used to be another metal disk, but last year brought a remarkable improvement. The Minneapolis license is now plastic, thicker and includes a QR code that calls up a web page for your dog. It's designed to make reuniting people with lost pets much, much easier, since no one who finds a missing pooch has a microchip reader in the glove compartment.

The fourth tag is different, and perhaps the least necessary. It's also the most personal.

This one is the simple name tag, and often the first one the dog gets.

You go to the pet store, choose a shape — a bone, a heart — and, for a fee, a machine will engrave it while you wait. Name on one side, phone number on the other. Then you slide it through the metal ring. This is the little ceremony that says the dog belongs to you.

A few weeks ago I corralled a stray. Once I got her in our garage, I looked at the collar, at the collection of tags. It wasn't the license I looked for, or the rabies tag (well, not unless the beast chomped on you). It was the simple name tag, with the number on the back so you can call the owner. (Which I did.)

It's the tag that says I belong, and someone misses me.

The one you keep after the dog's passed on. The one that said I named you, and you knew that name was yours.