melzawelza

Two dogs dead due to incredibly poor choices from their owners. Very, very sad.

City of Sydney Council have a great set up for their low income or disadvantaged residents and will be able to provide very low cost desexing (from memory about $50?). They will even transport the dog to their vet in Sylvania and back. Might be worth giving them a call on her behalf.

The Council only said they would allow the dog to be released when the fees were at over 4.5k. Not many people have that much cash up their sleeve, but the owner had about 3k through previous fundraising efforts. Team Dog raised the rest and then Council changed their minds again and refused to release him until after the hearing despite having the funds to pay. Luckily they've changed their minds back again, the fees have been paid, and his transport should pick him up on Wednesday. Doesn't change the fact that the dog can't go back to a family that loves him and wants him, that nearly 5k has been wasted on impound fees(imagine what that money could have done for pet retention, free desexing, microchipping etc), the cost of transporting him, the time taken to find him a home, get the letter required from DAS in the ACT... you would not believe the time, resources and money that have gone in to just trying to get this dog out alive. All because he has a red nose. Giving any credence at all to the legislation and BCC's actions because the dog escaped a couple of times is ridiculous.

Death isn't an appropriate punishment for a dog escaping the yard.

What a fantastic shot!

How absolutely horrendous

:laugh: You must both be very close to one another! I'm sure you will see them around once all of her assessments are completed and they're out walking again! They're lovely, lovely people. You live in a Council that is very compassionate and progressive when it comes to Companion Animals :)

Ooh, Ruby does LOVE to lick faces. I've seen a 'kissing booth' being run by 'Peace, Love & Pit Bulls' over in the States but hadn't thought of it for Ruby. Could be a great idea thank you!

In all serious, I think that is a great idea. It makes it so much more real to see the living breathing result of a campaign. And the next time something like this happens, there will be just that more understanding of what is at stake - life, love and happiness. Yes we're hoping so!

I hope they were happy tears! After making people cry with the first video I did, I really felt an obligation to make a 'happy' video. And then about a thousand people are saying how much they're crying again! :laugh: Haha! I know mine were happy tears. Ruby was almost flying with wiggly happiness! Such a lovely pup. I think you should raise funds by auctioning off hugs and kisses from Ruby herself ; p Bahaha, we're actually probably going to do something along those lines. Once she's been breed/temp assessed (providing she passes) we were talking about holding a 'meet Ruby' fundraising BBQ, where her followers in Sydney can come along and get cuddles and buy a sausage sandwich too.

Ruby went home last night :) Post here: Facebook post with video

If they're calm and not causing a problem what's the issue?

Yep whenever I go to a cafe with outdoor seating I take her (I've never come across one with outdoor seating that doesn't allow dogs). She knows the drill and sleeps under the table.

Because you're unnecessarily limiting an already pretty limited gene pool. Limit it that much more and you're bound to see more problems crop up.

Just read through the whole thread. I'm so sorry. What a beautiful girl she was.

You're right, I had forgotten about that. So we're up to four which is the minimum factors that were present in 80.5% of cases in the study. I wish it wasn't so easily predicted as that also means it was easily prevented, which is heartbreaking.

Aha. There's another common co-occurring factor for dog bite related fatalities. The victim having no familiar relationship with the dog. In fact we can tick three off the list from what we know so far:

Tragic. Absolutely tragic. Unfortunately we've already seen a few of the usual key contributors to fatalities by dogs such as no able bodied person present to intervene. The fact that the dog was named 'killer' also provides a possible look in to the reasons the dog was sourced and what behaviour it was encouraged to display. Dogs with very high prey drive can be triggered at the high pitched squeaky sounds that infants make, especially if not suitably socialised/exposed to infants and then left unsupervised. It may have been that the baby was making noise that gave the dog the impression that it was a prey animal and it behaved as dogs do towards prey animals.

As much as I personally on an emotional level find what happened awful and I would not like to see it ever happen again, I do think the logic in your argument is irrefutable BlackJaq.

I don't think Bonnie is really relevant to this directly and I'm reluctant to go off into a tangent on this one as I feel like this thread has finally gotten back on track. I will mention briefly that Bonnie was never set to be adopted directly from the pound. A very reputable rescue group was lined up to take her with an experienced foster carer. This group has some of the best behaviourists in Sydney on board with them should they ever need them, and they are not afraid to make the decision of euthanasia if it is the right thing to do. All pound staff and volunteers were totally confident she would pass the temp test as in three months she never showed any aggression to dogs or people, even dogs that went off at her. One of the main reasons they stuck their neck out for her was for this. The temperament assessment was performed by a vet in his vet surgery (we all know how some dogs can get at the vets), hardly a neutral place and by someone with no behavioural qualifications. It was performed after the dog had been impounded for three months. Again, not really neutral or fair. She apparently reacted to the other dogs there and was failed based on that. She deserved further assessment out of the pound environment, like any other dog would have gotten if they had a great rescue lined up to take them, especially after showing no behavioural issues in the pound. There have been numerous studies done in the USA recently showing that the way an impounded dog reacts in a temperament assessment, even a really well researched and performed one, can differ hugely from day to day and generally does not predict behaviour outside that environment. Unfortunately the legislation set her up to fail and denied her that. I am well aware of the temp test and the vet involved. Why did it take you three months to have Bonnie assesed? A NOI and assesment is a fairly straight forward process. It would have taken a couple of days max. The dog was declared a restricted breed already prior to being impounded due to a failure of the owner to have the dog assessed years earlier when an NOI was issued. It required a Council resolution from the Council that declared the dog to revoke the restricted breed declaration, and then a new NOI to be issued by the impounding Council, and the assessments to be organised. All this smack bang in the middle of December and Christmas - Council shutdown. As you can imagine a Council resolution takes time. If you have further questions I suggest you either talk to the Council that impounded her or PM me. It's not relevant to this topic and I'm not going to be involved in it getting derailed again.

I don't think Bonnie is really relevant to this directly and I'm reluctant to go off into a tangent on this one as I feel like this thread has finally gotten back on track. I will mention briefly that Bonnie was never set to be adopted directly from the pound. A very reputable rescue group was lined up to take her with an experienced foster carer. This group has some of the best behaviourists in Sydney on board with them should they ever need them, and they are not afraid to make the decision of euthanasia if it is the right thing to do. All pound staff and volunteers were totally confident she would pass the temp test as in three months she never showed any aggression to dogs or people, even dogs that went off at her. One of the main reasons they stuck their neck out for her was for this. The temperament assessment was performed by a vet in his vet surgery (we all know how some dogs can get at the vets), hardly a neutral place and by someone with no behavioural qualifications. It was performed after the dog had been impounded for three months. Again, not really neutral or fair. She apparently reacted to the other dogs there and was failed based on that. She deserved further assessment out of the pound environment, like any other dog would have gotten if they had a great rescue lined up to take them, especially after showing no behavioural issues in the pound. There have been numerous studies done in the USA recently showing that the way an impounded dog reacts in a temperament assessment, even a really well researched and performed one, can differ hugely from day to day and generally does not predict behaviour outside that environment. Unfortunately the legislation set her up to fail and denied her that. I don't really think Bonnie's specific case is particularly relevant to this discussion and I don't think we should focus on that when continuing this thread, but it does highlight the failings of the current NSW Legislation.

Many many people already did back in August, but unfortunately it seems he's still persisted with these current inclusions. Generic replies were received. We're currently deciding whether it's a good idea to persist with this again as the main push (Seeing as it's already been done) or go for a different approach.

Short answer? No. Dog attack stats are notoriously unreliable. NSW does collate them, but they are useless in trying to determine anything at all basically as the reporting (Especially of breed) is often subjective and it tallies up the amount of dogs of a breed in NSW based on microchip data, which doesn't count all the animals that aren't chipped or that are chipped as a different breed to what they actually are. If you're really keen you can read it here but really no conclusions can be drawn from it. http://www.dlg.nsw.gov.au/dlg/dlghome/dlg_generalindex.asp?sectionid=1&areaindex=DAIDATA&documenttype=8&mi=9&ml=10 ETA: it also doesn't differentiate between severity of attack, so a dog that kills a child and a dog that runs at someone barking is tallied all together and not differentiated in these stats. That is, thankfully, one of the good recommendations from the Taskforce that the Gov has agreed on.

For anyone that may be interested, back in August Team Dog put together a simple proposal for an alternative to Breed Specific Legislation, based heavily on the Calgary Model in Canada, which is a very successful breed-neutral animal management model. This was in response to Miranda Devine's article encouraging an expansion of BSL, and was encouraged to be sent to the Hon Don Page MP who publicly stated he would consider her proposal. Many people got involved. You can read it here: http://teamdog.com.au/TEAM%20DOG%20-%20THE%20SOLUTION.pdf

Team Dog were heavily involved in working towards the release of Bonnie and ensured that Hawkesbury staff and volunteers were given the praise that they so deserved in every post about her for the wonderful care of her while she was there. Any person posting disparaging comments about the Pound were corrected and a separate post also put up that was seen by over 10,000 people: Post thanking Hawkesbury staff and volunteers for all they did People should be shit scared about these proposals, no matter what dog they own, or even if they don't own dogs at all. It's as simple as that. Even if it's unlikely your breed will be targeted (pug owners, for instance), these laws have been proven time and time again to actually lessen community safety when it comes to dog attacks. Huge amounts of Council resources are taken up trying to enforce them, which means those resources aren'tbeing put in to the measures that do prevent dog attacks. Just adding one breed to either the menacing or dangerous risk would result in a workload that very few Councils have the resources to carry out effectively. Because this breed stuff is high profile it will be given priority. There won't be Rangers out patrolling the streets for off leash dogs, they'll be knocking on doors making sure that people have put up a 'warning dangerous dog' sign on their property for their dog that will never cause a problem. This means that even as a pug owner, this does pose a risk to you and your dog. Your dog will be more likely to be attacked by other dogs. Your family members or friends will be. This is a community issue, not a 'big dog owner' issue or 'pit bull owner' issue. Every time a community has been apathetic and just 'sat and waited to see' when these suggestions start, has ended in BSL. Every time people haven't taken it seriously and moved on it quickly, it has ended in BSL. The places that have beaten it are the places that get on it at the first whiff of a possibly and take it very seriously, like it should be. As previously mentioned, Team Dog is currently putting together a campaign. I encourage anyone, dog owner or not, to keep an eye on the page and get involved when it goes up. Thank you :) You are an inspiration, there is no doubt about that. The fact is when using social media you are targeting a number of people/groups. You only need one rouge to stir up a bunch of trouble and it is not a good look. All of what I posted happened and if you are associated with that, even via your site you have to admit it is a really poor reflection of what you ultimately hope to achieve. I dont care (sorry) about your posts praising staff as damage control after what eventuated to them. Too late, staff have already dealt with the issues and threats which takes time away from helping all companion animals in their care. Not just restricted breeds which are a minority in the sceam of things for this shelter. I agree it is a community issue, I have spoken about that for years. Though scaring the crap out of people via social media for signatures is not the way to go IMO. Get in touch and network with the bodies who are already involved (other than yourselves) :) Team Dog had absolutely nothing to do with the disgusting behaviour of some individuals in that situation and it's completely offensive to suggest we would. We can't control what other people do and post on facebook, only what happens on our own page. We were just as dismayed and disgusted as you when we heard what had happened late that night, not only because it's unacceptable behaviour but because of how it reflects on the topic as a whole, too. The post praising Hawkesbury staff and volunteers was posted long before any of that happened, and it's also offensive for you to suggest that it was posted as damage control. It was a genuine, heartfelt thanks for the care of a dog we all grew to love. When threats are made, it impacts upon shelters, the other animals in care, volunteers and the staff it is not only taking away from dogs like Bonnie, it takes away from the whole shelter equation. This we can absolutely agree on.