Brian Rudman: Dogs' life gets easier as the council heat goes off

For a while after the vicious dog attack on little Carolina Anderson in late January, it looked as though the authorities were preparing to confront the problem at its source.

In Auckland City, dog rangers were ordered to slap a $200 instant fine on the owner of any dog in public without a lead.

In the first week of the campaign, 42 tickets were issued.

But it's been downhill since.

In the following week, 21 tickets were served, and 10 in the week after.

In the first week of March - the last full week for which figures are available - ticketing was up slightly to 13.

If you wanted to be positive about it, you could say dog owners are getting the message. But I fear it's also a case of the authorities losing interest.

Two weeks into the blitz, I went for a stroll in the Tahuna Torea nature reserve, by the Tamaki River at Glendowie.

It's a wetland reserve dedicated to the protection of native birds, and the "no dogs" sign was clear at the entrance.

But within five minutes of entering the place I could have issued $1000 worth of fines. All would have been to the owners of large dogs who thought the occasional yell in the vague direction of a dog charging along the foreshore or along the creek bed was control enough.

What struck me was the eerie silence of the bush and the mangroves. Only around the pond, near the "civilised" corner of the park, was there any birdlife: bread-seeking ducks and pukekos.

Maybe the other birds had flown out to catch one of the last races in the America's Cup regatta. Or maybe they knew better than to hang about where dogs prowled.

Across town, in the Eden Albert ward, the community board marked the first-month anniversary of the attack on Carolina with crass insensitivity by voting, without public consultation, to open five public parks - or parts of them - as unleashed dog exercise areas between either 5pm or 6pm through to 9am the next day.

Councillor Glenda Fryer - whose geriatric dog was one of the first to get a $200 fine for sleeping on the berm outside their home - is angry about the lack of consultation. She says more exercise areas are needed, but "there was absolutely no need for the rush".

City bureaucrats, asked to comment on dog control problems by the Minister of Local Government, Chris Carter, are shuffling the blame on to the courts.

In a March 3 letter, the Auckland city environments manager, Jenny Oxley, tells of "considerable frustration with existing laws and in particular the attitude of the courts to use the full extent of the law. We are also concerned that the legal process is very cumbersome and time consuming."



Ms Oxley complains of the judiciary's reluctance to impose the maximum penalties. She recalls nine cases in the past five years where a conviction was proven but the judge refused a destruction order. Owners of unregistered dogs are discharged without conviction in significant numbers.

She refers to a case where the Solicitor-General refused the council permission to appeal after a mandatory destruction order was not given. The senior law officer's explanation was the case had been in the courts long enough.

This dog is back in court, having bitten again.

I can't go along with Ms Oxley's rejection of bans on certain breeds.

"There is," she tells the minister, "currently a huge amount of public hysteria surrounding the issue of dogs, with many people calling for the banning of certain breeds of dogs."

When you look at the number of dog attacks a month in Auckland City alone, I'd hardly call the public concern "hysteria."

Council records show that in the six years to June 30 last year, between 231 and 321 people a year suffered physical harm from dog attacks within the city.

A similar number of attacks on other animals also occurred. In the same period between 470 and 777 incidents of dogs rushing at people were reported each year.

Ms Oxley rejects the idea of banning breeds, unless courts are given the resources needed to cope with the time-consuming appeals likely.

A "far smarter option" would be to ban the importation of certain breeds and their semen.

She also says banning a breed "will not eliminate the problem as 'nice breeds' also bite".

Sure, but council files do indicate banning certain breeds would help. The breeds of just over half the 129 dogs involved in attacks in the six months to December 31 last year have been identified.

Practically all were descended from the breeds that scare us.

Staffordshire terrier crosses topped the list with 30 attacks, followed by the usual suspects - purebred or crosses of german shepherds (17), labradors (6) rottweilers (6), bull terriers (6) and terriers (3).

This suggests the elimination of suspect breeds and their offspring would halve the problem overnight. It sounds like a good place to start.

With a dog attack nearly every day within Auckland City, we have every right to be worried. And to expect action.