{"id":374442,"date":"2026-04-11T11:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/374442\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T11:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:22:09","slug":"tauranga-dog-trainer-renee-mabey-teaching-children-dog-safety-after-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/374442\/","title":{"rendered":"Tauranga dog trainer Renee Mabey teaching children dog safety after attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

One dog owner called for mandatory prosecution <\/a>of all owners of dogs involved in violent injury attacks – a call Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell supports.<\/p>\n

Data showed there were 71 reported attacks on people in Tauranga and 30 in the Western Bay of Plenty district in the year to June 30, 2025.<\/p>\n

The most serious case in the period was that of 4-year-old Timothy Tu\u2019uaki Rolleston-Bryan, <\/a>also known as Timoti, who died in March.<\/p>\n

The Government last month ordered a review<\/a> of the decades-old Dog Control Act in a bid to crack down on roaming and uncontrolled dogs.<\/p>\n

Local Government Minister Simon Watts said Local Government NZ and councils had been clear that the Act was outdated and stopping them from doing their jobs.<\/p>\n

Bridging the education \u2018gap\u2019 <\/p>\n

Mabey said she worked with families to address their dogs\u2019 behaviours \u201cthat we don\u2019t really love\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe owners get overwhelmed and frustrated, and the dog\u2019s behaviour intensifies.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually that\u2019s because there\u2019s kind of a misunderstanding of what the dog\u2019s trying to communicate to us and what their needs are.\u201d<\/p>\n

She worked with owners to identify these and how to reduce the likelihood of such behaviours.<\/p>\n

Mabey said she had taught her 6-year-old son about dog safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see out and about in the community … dogs are showing early warning signs, and we are not recognising them, and situations are escalating.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just made me kind of realise that there\u2019s a gap because we expect our kids to be safe around our dogs, but we\u2019re not teaching them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DogDog trainer Renee Mabey, owner of Neewood Pups, aims for her pilot programme on educating children about dog safety to be rolled out to other schools nationally. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Mabey said she wrote a dog safety pilot programme for primary school children. Lessons included understanding dogs\u2019 body language and greeting dogs safely. <\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, the goal is to help children better understand dogs so that they can be safer around them in everyday situations … \u201d<\/p>\n

She hoped for it to roll out nationally.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy opinion is that desexing helps with prevention, and then obviously we have enforcement at the other end, but we have a massive gap in the middle, which is education.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that if we educate earlier … we are likely to be able to stop things from happening through education.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"OropiOropi School principal Andrew King. Photo \/ Mead Norton <\/p>\n

Oropi School principal Andrew King said the school would do the programme in week one of term two.<\/p>\n

King said the programme was \u201ctimely\u201d and believed it should be rolled out to other schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have come across many issues recently [regarding] dog behaviour, and the key is educating people about how to behave around unknown dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said children needed to feel confident with how to interact with dogs in public places, should they be faced with this situation, and how to minimise the chances of a dog becoming aggressive.<\/p>\n

Megan Wilson<\/a> is a health and general news reporter for the Bay of Plenty Times and the Rotorua Daily Post. She has been a journalist since 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One dog owner called for mandatory prosecution of all owners of dogs involved in violent injury attacks –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,5660,1061,9219,195363,111,43,139,69,381,70128,15267,6302,1227,27406,8489],"class_list":{"0":"post-374442","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-after","9":"tag-attacks","10":"tag-children","11":"tag-dog","12":"tag-mabey","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-region","18":"tag-renee","19":"tag-reported","20":"tag-safety","21":"tag-tauranga","22":"tag-teaching","23":"tag-trainer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}