Help is in perlrequick, perlretut, and perlre. This ought to cover the test cases you mentioned:
my @lines = (
   "  A \t\t118\tAVIANN GILDED WILD HONEY. HM 123456. 02-04-97  \n",
   "  A \t\t118\tAVIANN-GILDED ... 'WILD' & HONEY. HP--09090901. 02-04
+-97  \n",
);

for my $line (@lines)
{
    my ($name, $reg, $dob) = ($line =~ /
        ^.+\t                             # ignore everything till the
+ last tab
        (.+?)                             # capture dog name
        \s+
        ([[:alpha:]]{2} [-\s]{1,2} \d+)\.? # capture dog registration
        \s+
        (\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{2})               # capture DOB
        \s*$                              # anchor the end of regexp
    /x);
    
    print
      "Name : $name\n",
      "Reg  : $reg\n",
      "DOB  : $dob\n\n";
}

__END__
Name : AVIANN GILDED WILD HONEY.
Reg  : HM 123456
DOB  : 02-04-97

Name : AVIANN-GILDED ... 'WILD' & HONEY.
Reg  : HP--09090901
DOB  : 02-04-97

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In reply to Re: regexp identify variable number of digits within a sentence by repellent
in thread regexp identify variable number of digits within a sentence by bdalzell

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