'I'm taking a stand for the little guy'

Agnew has been bullied because of his dwarfism. Photo / Northern Advocate

Kamo cattle farmer Alan Agnew has never heard of the term "short man syndrome". Which is surprising - given that he is a little person.

He's genuinely bewildered when he comes across the term in a letter to his local paper expressing outrage at his recent protest against bureaucracy.

"All you have succeeded in doing is taking 'small man syndrome' to new heights. I'm sorry your poor friend Coz had to suffer for your vanity."

Coz was Agnew's dog.

Last week - after a battle with the Whangarei District Council about whether he should be required to provide his date of birth to register his dogs - Agnew shot Coz and delivered the body to council staff in a dog biscuit bag.

There has been a public outcry and Agnew's height is often raised as an issue.

"Mr Agnew - you are using the fact you are short as a reason to be belligerent and overly violent," says another letter.

For the record, the online Urban Dictionary defines short man syndrome as: "an angry male of below average height who feels it necessary to act out in an attempt to gain respect and recognition from others and compensate for his abnormally short stature."

However, it then goes on to say it's also "a demeaning phrase to explain the everyday behaviour or reactions of a shorter man ... a device to excuse discrimination by blaming the recipient of that discrimination."

An attempt to explain this to Agnew has him scratching his head: "I don't quite understand that ... My height has nothing to do with this."

However, he admits people are often curious about his age because of his height and he's become a bit sensitive about it. He's not telling us how old he is - but records indicate he is 62 or 63.

He felt the council was bullying him for private information.

It's also clear from talking to Agnew that he is a man who has been bullied and shunned throughout his life because of his dwarfism, and he now takes a hard line against anyone or anything he feels threatens his sense of pride.

"The bigger people are, the more cowardly they are," he says.

According to Agnew, one of the earliest bullies in his life was his own father. He says his dad was a proud man who was ashamed of his dwarf son. Agnew believes he was left out of family outings as a child so his father would not have to be seen with him, and his dad was often cruel and brutal to him.

As an adult, he feels people still exclude him and mistreat him. He believes some are jealous and incredulous that a little person owns and manages a successful farm.

It's not surprising he has developed a thick skin, perverse sense of humour, and pugilistic approach to life. He certainly doesn't want pity.

Instead he seems to want to take on the world at his doorstep. He produces a suitcase crammed with paperwork relating to a roading dispute he's ensconced in; he's written to Fair Go about the approval of a local subdivision; he's painted "Please Abolish Daylight Savings" on the boot of his car. He believes daylight saving - moving the clock forward an hour in summer - is the root of all social evil.

Agnew lives down the road from Zion Wildlife Park, where TV's Lion Man also grabbed headlines with questions about the park's care of its animals.

Agnew's relatives sold some of the family farm to Craig Busch, where he established the park but then left under a cloud: animal welfare inspectors were concerned that some of the 40 big cats were kept in crowded and unsanitary conditions.

Alan Agnew objected to the park's development too, after a nightmare about the lions escaping.

He has his own family now. He shares his 131ha farm with his average-height wife Lesley and their four children, aged between seven and 18. Two of the kids are average height and two have inherited their fathers' dwarfism.

His family don't want to share the dubious spotlight Agnew has drawn by his actions and are making themselves scarce while he is interviewed.

Lesley says she found her husband's actions "just a tad" extreme".

The Agnews are devout Christians. They go to church every week; they talk about "the Devil's work".

Some might believe Alan's actions were the latter, but he says he had God's blessing to take the extreme action he did. They talk, he says.

"I was like Little Sparky (from the children's' story) getting sadder and sadder because nobody would listen to me," he says. "So I asked God for help and that was the answer - 'get rid of the dog'."

After all, he was taking a stand to protect the rights of people who don't have the guts to stand up for themselves, he says.

"Lots of people have told me 'well done' for what I did," he says. "I'm proud of it."

The stoush began when Agnew refused to provide the council with his birth date for the registration of his three farm dogs.

Agnew has a thing about age and birthdays. His parents never acknowledged his when he was a child, and he doesn't celebrate his own now.

He believes the date of birth is unnecessary to identify a dog's owner, and he objects to the unnecessary spread of personal information, which could be misused, or fall into the wrong hands.

For example? Once he signed forms for the purchase of some household items, and within weeks the new gear was stolen in a burglary.

Anyway, three times Agnew went to pay his registration, and three times the council refused to process it or take his fees without his birth date. He wouldn't budge. They wouldn't budge. It was David versus Goliath, he says.

The council would likely have fined him and potentially collected his unregistered dogs. So instead he went home, shot his huntaway dog Coz, called the local paper and with a reporter and photographer in tow, delivered the dead dog to the council offices.

"I said 'do you want my money or my dog?' ... They were stunned," he chuckles.

He's clearly chuffed with the controversy he has stirred up. He's heard it made headlines in Canada.

However, it has outraged animal welfare groups. RNZ SPCA boss Robyn Kippenberger has said that legally, Agnew was allowed to shoot his dog but it was a "very extreme action".

"This dog has been forfeited for what someone feels are their civil liberties. The dog has paid for his hypersensitivity," she told the NZ Herald. "The irony is that of all things, his dog would never have discriminated against him for his size or anything else."

Agnew says he sees his dogs as farm "tools". He doesn't have the same attachment to them as others might have to their pets.

But he also has a confession: Coz had recently bitten two people and killed some chooks. His dog was unpredictable and unsafe. It was going to be put down anyway.

Otherwise, he says, he would probably have found another way to make his point - although it's unlikely to have been conventional.

"Someone said I should have stood outside the council with a placard. People would laugh at me if I did that," he says.

As for his other two dogs, the district council has now accepted their registration despite not having Agnew's birthday on the form.

He's hoping that they will relax the rules for him again next year, but says either way his other farm dogs are not in danger.

"I've been talking to God and I have something up my sleeve," he says.

He also hopes his protest might serve a greater purpose by promoting some sort of national review of requirements for personal information.

"I'm taking a stand for the little guy," he says, without a trace of irony.