Doggone dingo in Hamilton
Somewhere in the streets of Hamilton lives a dog registered as a dingo.
The Australian canine is registered as one of the 11,939 hounds that call the city home.
The brindle-coloured pooch pounds the pavements along with some other rarer pups including a lonesome bloodhound, two german pinschers; six saint bernards and 10 great danes.
However on close investigation, the Hamilton City Council animal control team has revealed the dog is in fact a dingo-Australian cattle dog cross.
A council spokeswoman said the dog was registered on December 11 by its owner.
The Ministry for Primary Industries have also spoken to the owner to ascertain its breed.
The owner told MPI they received the dog from a Northland person, who told him the dog is mixed breed. Yet it is impossible to tell what the actual breed is without a DNA test.
Dingo-dog hybrids are common in parts of Australia.
News that a dingo had been registered as a pet in Hamilton surprised the Australian Dingo Foundation, a non-profit organisation established to promote the conservation of the dingo based in Victoria, Australia.
‘‘We are only able to export dingoes out of Australia to registered zoos.’’
It questioned whether the owner may have been creative when registering the dog.
‘‘We get mail constantly from people worldwide who think they have a dingo, but in reality nothing more than a red coloured prick-eared domestic dog.
‘‘Dingos are discouraged as pets by our organisation, not withstanding that some rare souls do have the skills, talent and patience to make wonderful owners and would never revert to a domestic dog after bonding with a dingo.’’
The most popular dog found in Hamilton is a labrador retriever with 1527 on the city’s books.
They lead the pack ahead of the 650 staffordshire bull terriers and third most popular – maltese – with 599 of the pups. Council’s online database reveals everything from the most popular dog breed to the more than $1 million the council collects in registration fees.
Given their frequency, retriever labrador cross breeds of dogs were also the most frequently impounded dogs in Hamilton, data shows.
The labrador canines are closely followed by american pitbull cross and staffordshire bull terrier cross breeds when it comes to ending up in the pound.
And the number of dogs being impounded has halved in the last financial year down from 1091 to 542 in the last year. In the last five years HCC received 11,400 complaints about troublesome tailwaggers resulting in 217 fines issued.
Most of those were for roaming dogs while other grievances were over unregistered, barking and unmuzzled hounds.
Of the fines issued in the last five years the most pinged were hounds homed in Nawton where more than 160 fines were issued, followed by Chartwell with 115 and Fairfield owners receiving 106 fines. Meanwhile those in Riverlea and Rototuna had the least with fewer than five infringements issued.
Of the almost 12,000 Hamilton hounds, 268 are currently classified as menacing and 11 are dangerous dogs.
The insights on the database can be adjusted to show data dating back to 1983.