I am a qualified canine tattooist
This is a genuine qualification, it is entirely legitimate, and it is not even slightly what people picture when I say it out loud at a party.
Let me deal with the obvious thing first.
I do not give dogs tattoos. Nobody gives dogs tattoos. What I am qualified to do is apply permanent identification marks to the inner ear of a sedated animal under veterinary supervision, which is a real procedure, used mainly for working dogs and rescue traceability, and which predates microchipping by about a century.
It is a letter-and-number code. It goes in the ear. It is done once, while the animal is already under for something else, and it exists so that a dog whose chip has migrated or failed can still be traced back to a rescue in Wolverhampton in 2014.
The training
Two days, twelve of us, mostly veterinary nurses and one man from a greyhound charity. You practise on pig ears from a butcher, which are the correct thickness and which the tutor brings in a cool box and takes home again, and I have chosen not to ask.
The assessment is on legibility and depth. Too shallow and it fades within eighteen months. Too deep and you have hurt an animal for no reason.
I passed. I have used it perhaps nine times.
My own two border collies are not tattooed. They are chipped, like everybody else’s, because I am a qualified canine tattooist and not a lunatic.
I have described myself as a qualified canine tattooist at four separate parties and allowed the misunderstanding to run for as long as it naturally wants to, which is usually about ninety seconds, and I would do it again.