Owner pays dearly for dog's run

By WAYNE THOMSON

Flossie the collie's 50m romp down the street to home has cost its owners a $500 fine under Auckland City's zero tolerance policy crackdown on unleashed dogs.

"Fifty dollars would be fine for being off the lead but $500 is insanity," Flossie's owner Leanne Pooley said yesterday after the infringement notice arrived from the council.

Her dog's first scrape with the new laws came on Easter Sunday. Mrs Pooley said her husband, Dean, and two daughters, aged 7 and 5, were walking home from their local Westmere dairy, with Flossie on the lead.

Six houses from home, Mr Pooley unclipped the dog's lead as he was juggling the groceries and the girls wanted to run ahead home.

There was no one in the 50m between Mr Pooley and his front gate. But a council dog control officer stopped his van and came over.

Mr Pooley called the dog to heel and reattached the lead.

The officer told him he was in breach of the law for having the dog off the lead in a public place and noted owner and registration details.

Mr Pooley said he was left flabbergasted by the officer's actions but a bigger shock was to come in the mail - a ticket for $500.

"I felt physically ill when I opened the bill," said Mrs Pooley.

"She wasn't on the lead and it's against the law, but my problem is how the law is being enforced."

The couple said the dog they got from the Humane Society as a sickly pup three years ago was obedience-school trained, was happy around children and was kept in a fenced garden, and had a microchip tag.

Dog Owners Group president Dr Cathy Casey said that dog control had gone mad.

Since new dog laws came into effect last December she had been waiting for the first call from a responsible dog owner unfairly targeted for a $500 fine.

The Pooleys' treatment by the officer was outrageous, said Dr Casey, and she would be calling on the council to withdraw the infringement.

The officer was not acting upon a complaint. Flossie's home street is near Cox's Bay Reserve, where Carolina Anderson was mauled by a staffordshire terrier in January last year.

Mrs Pooley said she wondered whether this attack had prompted a crackdown on the area.

She also suspected a cynical tactic to target people who dutifully registered their dogs because they were easy to track down and were the type who would pay the fine.

The council's team leader of compliance monitoring, Geoff Atherfold, said the act had allowed boosting the penalty for failing to comply with the bylaw from $200 to $500.

The council was taking a hard line on unleashed dogs since the Anderson attack, and was not giving warnings.

The chances of being caught had increased with a bigger team of officers, now numbering eight, enabling patrols seven days a week, including public holidays.

Offending areas

* Infringements recorded for the year to date showed Westmere had 29, compared with Tamaki-Maungakiekie 179, Avondale-Roskill 163, Eden-Albert 55, Hobson 17 and Gulf Islands 6.

* Patrols found 14 roaming unregistered dogs on one street in Glen Innes in one day.

* Eleven dogs were put down because no one claimed them.