Dog Act not spot on

While the government seeks to reform dog control legislation, Franklin Times reader Lois Hudson believes they must take dog owners into account.
She writes: 

The government’s recent announcement of a comprehensive review of the Dog Control Act is a start, but this review is looking at the wrong end of the leash.

The emphasis continues to be on dangerous dogs, with only a slight mention of the owners. The reality is that the real danger lies with the human perpetrators who inflict evil on their dog victims and the wider community.

While tougher penalties after a tragedy may satisfy a public desire for justice, they do nothing to address the lack of human accountability or the ongoing enabling of the owner before an attack occurs.

The public deserves to see the data from our three primary authorities: Auckland Council, the SPCA and the NZ Police.

Under the Dog Control Act 1996 (Sections 15 and 42), councils already possess the clear legal authority to seize and impound any dog that is not registered. This power is immediate; no warning is required. We deserve to know how often this existing power is actually exercised and how many times aggressive dogs have been reported – registered or not – with no proactive action taken.

Dogs are used for police work, customs, and therapy, yet many are abandoned in our communities and abused. In many animal abuse investigations, the focus remains on educating the owner, although, the proof of institutional failure of many animals is etched within recorded court proceedings and news media reports.

Dogs become reactive not because they are born bad, but because they are the broken results of human violence. We talk about ‘dangerous dogs’ and ‘victim dogs’ as if they are different animals, but the dangerous dog is often a victim [in] that the system failed to protect [it].

Also, so often authorities’ failures or delays in responding to community reports of an abused, suffering animal result in the heartbreak of the animal rescuer who has to hold that animal while it struggles and dies because the system waited too long or just did not act.

The Dog Control Act is primarily used by councils to manage roaming or aggressive behavior, often treating the dog as a problem to be destroyed, while the Animal Welfare Act is used by the SPCA and Police to deal with cruelty, treating the dog as a victim.

Because these two acts do not work in cohesion, a person can be investigated for a dangerous dog without any mandatory check into the human treatment or torture that caused the behavior.

The review has to address the urgent need for human accountability. It must bridge the gap between these two laws to directly target the abusers who are the reason for this suffering. The legal gaps that allow them to move on to their next victim must be closed.

As previously reported, dogs are thought to have been responsible for killing 18 goats at a Pokeno property. Click here to read more.