Dog ban stands after owner no show

Paul Logan has been banned from owning a dog for five years by the Whangarei District Council. Photo / File

A man whose two dogs viciously attacked a mental health worker has been banned from owning a dog for five years after failing to appear at his appeal hearing.

The matter was decided before the Whangarei District Council's exemptions and objections subcommittee last week.

The four councillors on the subcommittee - Shelley Deeming, Sue Glen, Greg Innes, John Williamson - unanimously decided to uphold the five year ban, the maximum possible.

When contacted by the Northern Advocate, Paul Logan said he did not appear as he felt the council had already made the decision. He previously pleaded guilty to three charges under the Dog Control Act after the woman was attacked on his Hatea Dr property in July, 2013.

The woman had been on a prearranged visit to a tenant at the house where the two dogs, both smithfield/mastiffs, were unrestrained.

"The victim was subjected to a prolonged attack and received severe injuries to her head, arms, legs and back," council documents said.

Both dogs were destroyed. Logan, who threw himself on the woman to protect her, was sentenced in the Whangarei District Court to four months home detention and ordered to pay the injured woman $500 in reparations.

The council disqualified Logan from owning a dog but he appealed the decision.

If he deserved to be banned from owning dogs then that should have been enforced by the court, not the council, Logan said.

"I can't see the whole point of it," he said. "I could have been made a probationary owner."

Logan said he would do things differently if he had the chance again. He said he would not have hunting dogs in a suburban area.

He planned to appeal the council's decision at the Whangarei District Court.

The manager of the council's animal control contractor Environmental Northland, Keith Thompson, told the subcommittee Logan had a number of dogs in the past which the council had dealings with.

"There's a very detailed record [but] nothing to this extreme," Mr Thompson said. "There's been attacking cats or chasing cats. All of the dogs have been very defensive and there's been no real effort to train them otherwise."

Whangarei District Council previously disqualified dog owner Donald Mitchell Hadges for five years after his three dogs attacked a child delivering pamphlets in 1999.