Desex appeal muddles message
‘‘This free programme means there are now no excuses for dog owners for failing to act responsibly.’’ City council head of environmental protection services Graeme Gillespie
The owners of five Palmerston North dogs classified as menacing have leapt on an offer to have their pets desexed free of charge.
But the SPCA has raised concerns about rewarding them for getting around to fulfilling an obligation responsible dog owners have paid for themselves.
The city council has contacted the owners of 52 dogs it knows are menacing, but have not been neutered, to offer them the free deal.
The owners of another 100 dogs in the city that are classified as menacing have already paid to have their pets fixed.
SPCA Manawatu manager Danny Auger said the scheme was a good start, but not without problems.
The SPCA was all in favour of desexing, because it often had a calming effect on the animal, and stopped aggressive traits being passed on to offspring.
But he had reservations about people being granted an easy way to dodge paying for something that was their legal responsibility.
‘‘And they could find a lot of people with these kind of large dogs won’t have them neutered even if you paid them.
‘‘It’s a kind of status symbol. And some people believe if you neuter a big male dog that it will somehow mess with their heads. Dogs don’t ‘think’ like that and any change is for the better.’’
The free offer has been made possible through a successful application to a $850,000 Department of Internal Affairs fund set up to help reduce the risk and harm of dog attacks.
City council head of environmental protection services Graeme Gillespie said the Palmerston North grant was worth about $10,000, and would pay for the dogs to be desexed and micro-chipped if that had not been done already, at Massey University’s veterinary teaching hospital.
Gillespie said the council’s goal was to have 80 per cent of the unneutered dogs it had recorded as menacing, either because of their breed or their behaviour, dealt with by the end of June.
He said the council’s Dog Control Bylaw already required menacing dogs to be neutered, but it was not enforced aggressively.
The requirement was likely to become law as part of a national action plan.
Gillespie said the department’s goal was to significantly reduce the population of American pitbull terriers, in particular, by stopping them from breeding.
‘‘This free programme means there are now no excuses for dog owners for failing to act responsibly.’’
The free offer ran counter to an earlier call from city councillor Rachel Bowen to make the cost of owning a menacing dog more expensive, rather than cheaper.
Bowen said the council probably would not have proposed the amnesty itself, but when there was government money on offer, it made sense to use it and get a good result for the community at no cost to ratepayers.
She said as well as reducing the potential for menacing dogs to breed, the programme could help ‘‘flush out’’ the owners of menacing dogs that were not even registered. ‘‘There are potentially real community benefits there, as the problem is with dogs that are roaming, that are not registered and are also menacing.’’