Councils cop hefty pound fees for care of seized dogs
Dog attacks are soaring in Melbourne’s suburbs and while councils are doing their best to seize dangerous dogs, the crackdown is having some serious repercussions that may end up hurting ratepayers.
VIC News
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Dangerous dogs are costing councils tens-of-thousands of dollars a year to keep locked up as their owners drag cases through the courts.
Some pounds are charging $40 a day per dog — sometimes for months on end — to house the seized animals, with councils struggling to recoup those costs when cases end.
A Sunday Herald Sun investigation has found one dog was behind bars for a year.
Port Phillip council was charged nearly $8300 just for one dog last year and more than $23,000 in total.
A source said some councils were clawing back less than five per cent of impoundment and other fees from owners of seized dogs, through the courts and Fines Victoria system.
Frankston councillor Kris Bolam, who is lobbying the State Government for a Victoria-wide animal ownership test to be introduced, said it was ratepayers who ultimately wore that cost.
“There is a cost that comes with sheltering and looking after animals … and it’s a struggle to get those costs back,” he said.
Under the changes being proposed by Frankston council, through the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV), all Victorians would have to pass a test before being allowed to own a dog.
“But we’ve received no indication of support from the Government to date,” Mr Bolam said. “There’s been no political will to seriously look at that option.”
Mr Bolam also wants discounted registration fees for owners who take their dogs to formal obedience training.
It comes as dog attacks soar in the suburbs, with more than 700 in the Frankston, Wyndham, Brimbank, Casey and Port Phillip council areas over the past year.
In Brimbank, in the city’s west, more than half the dog attacks happened in streets, with the others occurring in parks and homes.
Prosecutions by Frankston and Casey councils last month included cases where bull terriers and cattle dogs attacked other animals or people – with one woman recovering from breast cancer surgery hospitalised after being bitten on the arm by a lunging dog that was being walked on a chain on a Cranbourne footpath.
In other cases before the courts, two escaped dogs dragged another dog down an embankment to its death, a pair of heelers attacked people and ponies and council officers discovered a 20 year-old Frankston woman illegally breeding and selling pit bull terrier puppies inside her home, in conditions described to the court as “putrid … and appalling”.
At Frankston council, prosecutions have skyrocketed from 71 in 2018 to 125 last year while at Melton they have jumped from 14 to 20 over the same period. They have also risen in Casey.
At Wyndham, in Melbourne’s southwest, 15 dangerous dogs were seized after attacks last year and 13 euthanised.
“There were 69 reports of attacks on people and 129 reports of attacks on animals,” Wyndham city operations director Stephen Thorpe said.
In Melton, there were 143 dangerous dog reports investigated and 18 dogs seized.
Epworth plastic surgeon Robert Donato said he was patching up at least one Melbourne dog bite victim a month and sometimes as many as one a week.
“It seems to be happening more often,” he said. “And surgeons only see a small portion of the bites which are occurring in the community … the ones we see are the severe ones, where there is loss of tissue that needs reconstruction or significant infection.”
The human cost of dangerous dogs
Doctors are seeing “far too many” dog bites, with one Melbourne surgeon patching up at least one victim a month and sometimes as many as one a week.
Epworth plastic surgeon Robert Donato said he was treating, and hearing about, a lot of serious dog bites.
“It seems to be happening more often that dog bites are being operated on,” Mr Donato said. “And surgeons only see a small portion of the bites which are occurring in the community because most people go to GPs and some look after themselves. The ones we see are the severe ones, where there is loss of tissue that needs reconstruction or where there is a significant infection.”
Dog bite injuries in adults were often to the hand, while in children they could be to the face.
The risk of infection after dog bites complicated treatment and wounds to hands could result in serious nerve and tendon damage, Mr Donato said.
Dog bites he had recently treated came from the patients’ own dogs – some of which had been owned for many years and never bitten before – to neighbours’ dogs and strange dogs roaming the streets.
A father of three young children, Mr Donato said seeing so many bad bites from family pets made him worry for the safety of his own kids around dogs.
A Surrey Hills grandmother he treated last year had “a very big flap of skin” torn from her right hand by a family member’s Rhodesian ridgeback at a backyard BBQ.
The patient, Wendy Bowden, said the bite was “a freak accident”.
“There was food involved and he lunged at another dog and my hand happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said.
Ms Bowden, a dog-lover, was hospitalised for a week after surgery and needed hand physiotherapy for six weeks.
It was months before the former nurse could use her hand normally again.
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