Corner Brook -
If any municipality is looking to strengthen its animal-related bylaws and regulations, the City of Calgary have the model to emulate.
Bill Bruce is Calgary's director of animal and bylaw services and the municipality's chief bylaw enforcement officer.
What he and Calgary have done to address issues such as incidents of dog bites, dog licensing compliance and the enforcement of animal-related bylaws has become so renowned that Bruce has been invited to give presentations on their success to virtually very major municipality in Canada. He has spoken about it to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and was invited to present to the City of St. John's a number of years ago. To put it in perspective, Calgary's dog population is estimated to be about 110,000 animals. About 101,000 - or nearly 92 per cent of them - are licensed.
Anyone failing to license their dog could face a fine of $250. The same fine amount would be levied to anyone charged with not cleaning up after their dogs in public areas, which are regularly patrolled by enforcement officials in Calgary.
In terms of incidents of dog bites, there were 145 cases in 2008 and there have been 80 incidents this year. Most cities the size of Calgary, which has a population of 1.2 million people, deal with thousands of dog bite incidents each year, according to Bruce. If Bruce has to get a court order to have a troublesome or ill dog destroyed, that dog's owner pays the fee associated with having the animal put down.
If a dog has been declared vicious and bites again, its owner can face serious fines. In one incident, a woman's two border collies were declared vicious and the owner had a number of conditions placed on her if she wanted to keep the dogs. She never obeyed the conditions and the dogs bit again. She was fined $18,000 and the dogs were destroyed.
A recent vicious dog attack on a nine-year-old girl in Corner Brook resulted in three charges against the owner which carried a total maximum of $275 in fines.
Bruce said the program in Calgary is a multi-step program, which emphasizes holding the owner accountable.
"We have built an entire program that is not an animal control program - it's a responsible pet ownership program," he told The Western Star in an interview recently. "It starts from the first time we see trouble with a dog, It's a process of education and enforcement to create change to get the dog owner to take responsibility."
Bruce will investigate any report of a dog bite, even one inside a private home.
"No dog is entitled to bite under any circumstance, unless it's something like you accidentally stepped on it and it nipped you," said Bruce.
Dog owners in Calgary will be warned if they leave their dogs tied up all day without supervision, a factor many feel leads to dog aggression.
Calgary's responsible pet ownership program is a $5-million-a-year operation funded entirely from revenue generated from licensing of animals and penalties levied for violations. Bruce said licensing accounts for about 90 per cent of the revenue.
It costs $31 to license a spayed or neutered dog for a year in Calgary. Licensing an intact animal costs $52. An animal can be licensed 24 hours a day, seven days a week over the phone or on the city's website. Licences may be purchased at city hall or the animal control office and the bill can be paid at a banking institution.
Licensing a dog also means the animal will be returned to the owner without question the first time it gets lost or loose. The animal control office inserts a microchip containing a wide range of information about the animal in every pet it adopts out. Inserting a microchip - which Bruce says takes a vet about 30 seconds to do - is not mandatory when licensing an animal in Calgary but pet owners are encouraged to do so.
"We've added value to having your dog licensed with our return to owner program and there are a lot of benefits," said Bruce.
In addition to licensing and effective enforcement, Calgary also has a range of public education programs which include teaching bite prevention to children in case they encounter a potentially dangerous dog.
In a nutshell, the responsible pet owner program in Calgary is based on four principles, including: licensing and permanently identifying the pet, spaying or neutering the pet unless the owner is a certified breeder or working with one, properly socializing and taking care of the animal's health and finally, not allowing the pet to become a nuisance or threat to the community.
"We don't need a lot of complicated laws or take measures like banning breeds. We don't limit how many animals you can have. We just hold you to those four principles."
