Dog behaviour gets reviewed
An Ipsos-Reid survey conducted last year estimated there were more than 230,000 dogs in the City of Toronto. Fewer than a quarter were licensed — a mandatory measure that’s only enforced in practice if your dog does something horrible and bylaw officers manage to track you down, concedes Mary Lou Leiher, a program manager with the city’s animal services division. It’s not quite UberX or jaywalking, but it’s certainly in the scofflaw major leagues.
Getting the licensing numbers up is one of the goals of the city’s five-month Review of Dog Behaviour and Responsible Dog Ownership. (Short of an Inquiry Into Politeness, it’s about the most Torontonian undertaking imaginable.) The impetus was a report last year from ombudsman Fiona Crean, who criticized animal services’ slow and sloppy handling of a serious biting incident. Licensing helps track down problem dogs, of course, and Leiher stresses the $25 fee — $60 for dogs that aren’t spayed or neutered — goes toward shelter services, reuniting lost dogs with owners and spay-and-neuter drives.
Citizens have taken the review far beyond licensing, however, straight to the front lines of the canine-human wars: dogs off leash, excessive barking, uncollected poop and owner-on-owner conflict.
At a public meeting this week at East York Civic Centre, owners commiserated that so many of their ilk really don’t know the first thing about canine behaviour — not least when they harmlessly work through their differences at the dog park.
I’ve seen it myself in brief stints looking after friends’ dogs. Wiggly puppy wants to play. Older lady dog not interested, impolitely tells wiggly puppy as much, and then wiggly puppy’s owners are shooting daggers at you … or worse.
“A terrible dog fight is when a dog goes down, the pack attacks, and blood is drawn,” argues Gillian Morton, a veteran dog walker who lives and works in the Annex. In 15 years, she says, “I have never seen that in an off-leash park.” Many owners have much more refined standards, however.
“I just take getting yelled at on a regular basis as part of dog ownership,” said one woman at the meeting.
Andre Yeu, owner and head trainer at When Hounds Fly in downtown Toronto, says his classes teach new puppy owners what to tolerate and what not to. Without that education, he says, it can be tricky.
“There’s some people that are oversensitive to what might just be rambunctious play, or a light tell-off,” says Yeu. “And then there are also owners … who are bringing their dog (to the park), with genuinely good intentions, not realizing that their dog is actually … playing way too rough, is way too aroused, and their behaviour is bordering on aggression that can lead to real conflict and real damage.”
I find it all a bit bizarre. If you didn’t want a pet that behaves like a dog, why did you get a dog? And I find the antidog camp only slightly less puzzling. Genuine phobics aside, what sort of joyless crank would object to the sight of a friendly, well-behaved dog off his leash in a wide-open park, or trotting down a residential street?
Lots, apparently. The city investigated a remarkable 829 complaints about dogs off leash last year; under a crackdown this year, it had exceeded that number by early June.
However good your dog might be offleash, Yeu argues, obeying the law is a matter of common courtesy. “It’s a symptom of the fact that maybe there aren’t enough off-leash spaces in the city, but regardless, that doesn’t make it OK,” he argues. “There are a lot of people who don’t like dogs, are fearful of dogs, or have allergies or medical issues related to dogs. The public shouldn’t have to tolerate that.” And clearly many don’t.
I think it’s rather sad that so many people are so leery of dogs. But flouting the law is no way to ratchet down the conflict level or advance the pro-dog agenda, which won a slew of new offleash areas in 2010.
The key across the board, many argue, is more education — both for owners and for the general public. The Humane Society argues people, including children, should know how to anticipate when a dog might bite. Morton suggests kids could learn about dogs in schools. But she suspects the best education, and better pro-dog/anti-dog relations, will come at the individual community level, with dialogue among neighbours, not through a poster campaign or advertisements.
The larger issues are likely beyond city hall’s control, in other words. In the meantime, the licensing and leash scofflaws are almost certainly hurting the canine cause.
Torontonians have until Oct. 30 to make their pro- or anti-dog opinions known to the city. Staff will report back to the licensing committee next month.