Piling on the pound

Unhappily, problems can present themselves with that method too, as more than a few distressed owners can shudderingly attest. Especially if the animal isn’t, at the time, in a state of natural or chemicallyinduced calmness.

Nevertheless, the ICC would do well to reassess whether the bolt gun is still the best option.

Maybe it is. But the question arises in the aftermath of muchwatched footage, made public by Paw Justice, showing a particularly unpleasant-looking dispatch at the pound.

It shows an unedifying aftermath in which a pound officer repeatedly plonks his foot on a shot dog’s head. Not as gratuitously as it might appear, but because a catchpole around the slumped dog had become caught in caging. (Catchpoles being used when judged necessary for staff safety.)

Using a foot to disengage things might have been the best option if all that mattered was economy of effort, but a gentler methodology, even with what was by then a dead dog, would have been much preferable.

So the council can hardly say it hasn’t put a foot wrong. But the filmed spectacle does invite a wider suspicion that pound practices in general mightn’t be as scrupulous as the public would want.

We’re not entitled to assume that’s the case. The operation has passed Ministry for Primary Industry inspection albeit with a recommendation that the bolt gun method be reconsidered by a senior vet.

The council reasonably enough points out that owners (when they can be found) have the option of paying for an injection instead, rather than the use of the gun, at no direct cost to them.

Even then, it says lethal injections have in the past proven stressful for both dogs and staff, particularly since the doomed dogs must be transported to them (the vice versa being something vets have previously deemed uneconomic). And vets would not euthanise dogs deemed dangerous or diseased.

Clearly expense issues are also being factored into the council’s thinking. But an honest reassessment is in order, even so. This mightn’t be one of those issues where the public wants the council necessarily to go for the very lowest-cost options.