Bid to limit dog numbers to six per walker opposed by board

Dog owners and walkers could be banned from walking more than six dogs at a time if proposed changes to Auckland Council’s dog policy and management bylaw come into force next year.

A council working group also wants to limit the number of dogs that can be off-leash at any one time to a maximum of three per walker.

However, after hearing from two dog walking professionals at their October 16 meeting, Rodney Local Board members voted to oppose the idea in their feedback on the bylaw and policy review.

Ben Spick from the recently formed Professional Dog Walkers Association and dog trainer and walker Caleb Hendry told members the proposals were premature and not backed up by data.

“Council’s evidence to you was that just 0.7 per cent of complaints relate to multiple dog walkers,” Spick said. “The largest issue was roaming dogs, which account for 35 per cent of complaints, and that’s a 50 per cent increase on what it was 12 months ago.

“The key issue is not people walking multiple dogs, it’s roaming dogs – or people who don’t care about their dogs, not the people who are sending their dogs out with trained professional walkers.”

He added that making new rules wouldn’t change anything.

“Existing bylaws and rules already cover this issue. Dog owners are already required to keep their dogs under effective control – whether you walk one dog, three dogs, six dogs or are a professional, the same rule applies.”

Spick said it wasn’t that the rules weren’t in place, it was that they weren’t being enforced. “The key issue is that when complaints are laid, council staff can’t respond. There are not enough council staff in the right places to manage this issue.”

He suggested board members should ask officials to look at cost effective, educational solutions to the problem using existing tools, and to work with the dog walking trade “so we can all be part of the solution”.

Hendry said SPCA research from 2018 showed that fewer than 30 per cent of dog owners were giving their pets enough exercise, a situation that inevitably led to bad behaviour by dogs.

He said council seemed to have picked an arbitrary limit and the actual number of complaints could be viewed as statistically insignificant.

“It’s really important to try to not hurt a thing that is helping us. We’re happy to talk to council. Let’s just pause this, because there hasn’t been due diligence,” he said.

Members voted to oppose the proposed changes to limit off-leash dog walking, saying the need for the change was not backed by evidence and the negative outcomes or reduced recreation and exercise outweighed potential benefits.

They also requested that council focused on compliance with existing bylaws in areas where they were being breached, and asked that public consultation allowed submitters to provide detailed feedback on each of the proposed changes.

Local board views and the proposed changes will be presented to council’s regulatory and safety committee on December 3, before going out for public consultation early next year.

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Seniors question dog walking limits

By Laura Kvigstad, Auckland Council reporter. Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.

Auckland Council’s Senior Advisory Panel took the opposite view to Rodney Local Board when it was presented with dog management review proposals on October 7, with some members saying even a six-dog limit was too high.

“If a number of the dogs are large dogs, there’s no way in the world one person could control six large dogs,” panel co-chair Claire Dale said.

Another member, Janis McArdle, said the idea of what was “under control” was up to interpretation and based on who you spoke with.

“We have had some really horrific incidents here on [Waiheke] Island. There’s one chap who was regularly, until about a year ago, walking up to 10 dogs off lead and that was very, very scary,” she said.

However, another member, Lindsay Waugh, said the proposal was overly prescriptive, as the current bylaw already required dogs to be under control at all times.

“Big dogs, small dogs, there is a vast difference in how many you can or should control, but the current bylaw states that dogs must be under control at all times,” Waugh said.

And Susanne Tapsell said she lived near a park and had never seen a dog control officer.

“It’s an on-leash park but all of the dogs are off leash all the time. No one is ever being stopped,” Tapsell said.

She questioned whether the council had the capacity to support a new rule.