Southern dogs under control, behaving and returned
Of the 3,410 registered dogs living in the district, only 152 were listed in the South Wairarapa District Council’s Dog Control Activities complaints register for the year to July 2024 _ 13 more than the prior year but down 57 on 2021-22.
The highest number of complaint offences _ 83 _ were for dogs which were found wandering, fouling and/or uncontrolled.
Which means some 3,258 were not involved in aggressive behaviour, wandering, attacking people (six in the year), stock (six) or other pets (three), or lost _ then found (five).
Mutts classified legally as “dangerous” totalled just one, half the number of the two previous years.
On the facts, the council clearly is of the view that local dogs should not have a bad name. Nor should the area’s 2117 dog owners _ or at least most of them.
Dog owners were as well behaved as their pooches during the year, with 145 dog control bylaw infringement notices issued for the year _ up 13 on the prior year, with the worst category a total of 34 notices for owners failing to microchip their mutts.
Just 10 owners were issued infringements for “failure to keep dog controlled or confined,” and no doubt some of those dogs were among the six responsible for “attack on a person” complaints.
The biggest dog bad behaviour category? Some 41 dogs whose whining and/or barking sparked formal complaints to dog control.
One other category worthy of note in the report was that 37 dogs were impounded during 2023-24 _ no doubt living it up in the new SWDC pound facilities, including solar panels, a pound which won a national design award last year.
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