YOUR LETTERS Dog bylaw changes a mistake

I had a small vacation in your city 13 months ago and this year my return vacation was on hold due to the wildfires.

I may reconsider strongly any future vacation plans after reading about your changes to the dangerous dog bylaw.

I am appalled at a time when medical science and safety stats and genealogical studies and jurisdictions in other countries have tightened the rules around dangerous dogs and the many other breeds encompassed. Other regional districts are taking a pro-active approach against these breeds, with serious restrictions and prohibitions and non-breeding phase-out and off-limits areas of walking/visits and interactions with other pets and children/ pedestrians.

Reading this new dog bylaw and the bylaw attack on cat owners leaves me with the experienced conclusion that your council is infected with a conflict of interests here. There must be multiple dog owners and relations involved to come to this mindless bylaw reversal? A ca- pitulation to the strong American Pit Bull lobby, not unlike the gun lobby, that refuses to see logic and safety stats and common sense laws? Refuses to witness the horrors of dog attack victims?

What are reasonable people to conclude?

The province was just requested by a bylaw officers’ committee last month to strengthen dangerous breed categories, create a registry and to prevent a violator from moving to another district to escape legal repercussions. Are you going against the grain of these professional officers?

Hopefully you or your friends/ relatives/children are never attacked by an autonomously minded fanged canine. I’ve been there several times in the past with no recourse from existing law.

Your “barking nuisance amendments” are also insensitive to peaceful people. The barking can be heard up to a kilometre, your proposed bylaw does not take into account the aggregate sum of various dogs barking.

Ten minutes an hour per day and five minutes per hour at night? Come on, really? Dogs bark only because owners allow or encourage them to. One min- ute is intolerable and no minutes at night is the expected norm. Dogs do not have volume control, while destroying the quality of life to those within a radius of hearing.

Your property values and retention of good working professionals went down after the fires and this plan of yours adds to the outflow and discontent, not to mention the negative tourist dollar feedback.

I’ve owned dogs, two were genetically psychotic and unfit to be around strangers despite our best love and care. Science indicates and documents that 20 per cent of modern dog breeds have significant genetic problems, many neurological.

I strongly recommend you do not ignore science and medical reports and hospital stats and the Canadian and human right to be free from danger. Be pro-active and preventative. Your council is imposing an unacceptable danger and intrusion upon peaceful safe people and other creatures and pets. One would conclude a form of bullying upon the quiet majority underlies this reversal of your bylaw. Peter Bolten Parksville