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<\/p>\nA dog in an Auckland Council animal shelter is so aggressive it has bitten off the tip of a staff member\u2019s finger \u2013 and has to be sedated with a blow dart so it can be moved between kennels.<\/p>\n
By Torika Tokalau of Local Democracy Reporting<\/p>\n
Animal management staff are facing increasing threats from aggressive dogs and their owners in Auckland, with the latest figures revealing that abuse has more than doubled from the previous year.<\/p>\n
Auckland Council head of animal management Ellie Waitoa said having to deal with a dog by sedating it should give people a fair idea of how aggressive some dogs could be.<\/p>\n
“We’re dealing with some pretty gnarly behaviours, unfortunately.”<\/p>\n
The dog seriously attacked one of its owners, but they still want it back.<\/p>\n
Thirty-three new kennels were being built at the Manukau Animal Shelter, and an extra 14 kennels were being built at the same shelter to hold dangerous and high-risk dogs.<\/p>\n
“Some of these dogs are so aggressive … we can’t risk handling them.”<\/p>\n
The report also highlighted an increase in staff exposure to high levels of violence and aggression while carrying out their duties in the community.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The latest Animal Management report reveals a startling increase on staff abuse while carrying out their jobs in the community. (Source: istock.com)<\/p>\n
In the past year, 759 incidents were recorded in the council’s health and safety management system, up by two-thirds from the previous year.<\/p>\n
Of these, eight cases were classified as high-risk.<\/p>\n
A total of 291 incidents involved violent or aggressive behaviour from members of the public towards staff, representing a 112% increase from the previous year.<\/p>\n
The three most commonly reported risk categories were violent and aggressive behaviour from people, animal aggression and movement, and psychosocial risk.<\/p>\n
“People are very, and understandably so, attached to their dogs and it’s not a nice situation to be [in] when council have to impound your dog and hold it potentially.<\/p>\n
“But it does not excuse the behaviours that stem from that. We’ve had staff that have been assaulted, physically threatened, [there’s been] threats against the shelter.<\/p>\n
“We have security at the shelters because we’ve had people try to break in, it’s typically just really appalling behaviour.”<\/p>\n
Waitoa said desexing the animals would help minimise a lot of the issues, including the uncontrolled dog population.<\/p>\n
“The officers are all animal lovers, despite what may be posted on social media. You look at those shelter staff: they’re cleaning, picking up poo, feeding, providing medical attention, exercising, providing enrichment for the dogs and their care each year.<\/p>\n
“You wouldn’t do that if you didn’t love dogs. So it’s kind of a misdirected anger, whereas owners should be really focused on the people who’ve let these dogs down in the first place and let the public down.”<\/p>\n
Local Democracy Reporting is local-body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dog in an Auckland Council animal shelter is so aggressive it has bitten off the tip of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50,51,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-644535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-animals","tag-auckland","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644535","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=644535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}