A wandering dog in Moerewa in the Far North. Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf
Northland's roaming dog epidemic has turned a Whangārei grandmother into a prisoner in her own home.
Tracy Clarke says she loves walking, but has not ventured even to the corner of her street in three years, after a series of close calls with rushing dogs.
If it was not for a courier driver who saved her during one particularly frightening incident, she was convinced she would not be alive today.
"I just walked around the corner of the street. I really had nowhere to go. This dog just came flying out a couple of metres in front of me, it was heading straight for me, and I just froze," she said.
"Then I heard a lady scream at me, and I literally dived into her van, slammed the door shut, and this dog's mouth was up at the window."
Clarke's walking days ended there and then.
Dogs were constantly roaming her neighbourhood, she said.
She praised the efforts of the council's animal control officers, but said they were hamstrung by ineffective and outdated laws.
She knew of one especially aggressive dog that had been wandering her street for more than three years - but every time it was picked up, the council was required to give it back.
Clarke has now organised a petition, calling on Parliament to tackle the crisis.
"People have had enough of the situation. They want to see the government step up and rectify it, sort it out, and rewrite laws that were actually written way back in the 1980s."
A pack of roaming sharpei-cross dogs in bush near Paihia in the Bay of Islands. Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf
New measures could include mandatory desexing, a three-strike rule for owners of roaming dogs, fence height requirements and steeper fines for irresponsible owners.
Her petition did not target responsible owners - she said it could actually benefit them.
Responsible dog owners currently carried much of the cost - collected through registration fees - of fixing the problems created by bad owners.
Clarke said she had received high-powered backing in recent days with the SPCA urging its supporters to sign the petition.
The SPCA said roaming dogs were a serious risk to animal welfare and public safety.
"Dogs that roam are at risk of being injured or killed in traffic, becoming involved in dog attacks, transmitting disease, wildlife predation, fouling and becoming a community nuisance. Many dogs that roam are often not desexed, contributing to unwanted litters."
Fixing those problems required a combination of education, enforcement and legislative reform, the SPCA said.
Further north, Bay of Islands dog advocate Leonie Exel agreed the situation was "out of hand".
"As the economy worsens and people get poorer, it's getting worse because people don't have the money to fence, they don't have the money to feed their dogs properly. People are exhausted so they let their dogs wander. All these factors come into play, it's a very complicated issue," she said.
A dog roams the streets in Kaikohe. Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf
Exel said the current law did not serve communities well, and led to inconsistencies in the ways councils around the country approached the roaming dog problem.
She said mandatory desexing - except for dogs belonging to registered breeders - would help, but the "absolute key" to changing owners' behaviour was community education about how to care for dogs and be safe around them.
"A happy dog is not often a dangerous dog … We need to have lots of loved dogs, not wandering on the streets killing cats or getting into people's rubbish and driving them mad, or biting people, or making people afraid to walk their own dog. Until we do community education, de-sexing, and have really effective animal control, we'll keep having the same problem."
Far North Mayor Moko Tepania said his council would explore its options when the dog control bylaw came up for renewal next year.
The problem was huge, he said.
"In the Far North, we have around 8000 dogs registered annually and 12,000 dogs on record. But the probable reality is that we've got more than 20,000 to 30,000 dogs across the district," he said.
Tepania agreed the current law needed to change.
He supported a push by Auckland Council for greater powers to de-sex roaming dogs when they were picked up, so they did not carry on breeding once they were returned to their owners.
New figures from ACC showed the dog problem was also hitting New Zealanders in the back pocket.
In the year to the end of October, dog-related ACC claims totalled more than $15.6 million, on track to break 2024's record of $18.5m for the full year.
That was a roughly 80 percent increase from the total of $10.6m five years ago.
In Northland alone the cost was $1.1m for the year to the end of October, more than double the 2020 figure of $509,000.
The number of dog-related injury claims to the end of October was just under 12,000, with 750 of those in Northland.
A pack of roaming sharpei-cross dogs in bush near Paihia in the Bay of Islands. Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf
Tracy Clarke said politicians had allowed the problem to escalate for too long.
"All I want is to be able to walk down to the dairy to get my milk, or walk up the road to wait for the bus. In three years I haven't walked to the corner, which is probably about 100 footsteps away."
However, Clarke said the petition was not just for herself.
It was for everyone who had been affected by poorly cared-for dogs, or those who had lost their lives, such as Elizabeth "Effie" Whittaker in Moerewa in 2023 and Neville Thompson in Panguru in 2022.
"This is about the Nevilles from Panguru. It's about the people whose animals have been killed, it's about the kid down at the park you see on the news who's just suffered a dog bite. It's about the old lady who's too scared to take her little chihuahua for a walk. All those scenarios we're just seeing way too many of," she said.
Local Government Minister Simon Watts said he understood and shared community concerns about roaming dogs.
Watts said he and Andrew Hoggard, the minister responsible for animal welfare, had asked the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) to "explore non-regulatory approaches to support better dog control".
That included improving the quality and consistency of dog-related data, he said.
The DIA told a Parliamentary Select Committee last month that the Dog Control Act was "increasingly not fit-for-purpose" but the government had no plans to amend it at this time.
Clarke's petition on the Parliamentary website closes on 25 November.
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