FROM THE EDITOR

I took my children to the playground recently. There was a break in the wet weather so it was reasonably busy. I saw plenty of dog-walkers around, too, as there was an off-leash area nearby. I noticed an unfriendly, uncollared, pitbull-looking dog sniffing around - no owner in sight. I say unfriendly because it was growling at a few of the other dogs. So I called animal control we were at a playground with young children after all. I was told that, because of the breed of dog described, the case would be treated as an emergency. I packed up my kids and headed home. Four hours later the phone rang, it was the contractor from animal control telling me he had just arrived and there was no sign of the dog. At first I thought it was a joke, it wasn’t. We hear of so many dog attacks, often involving children. Does a dog actually have to attack someone before the situation is treated as urgent? Something needs to be done, a start would be to employ more staff to investigate cases like this.