A dog's life

After a rash of dog attacks around the country, Alistair Bone goes on patrol with an SPCA Inspector.

ALISTAIR BONE

After a rash of dog attacks around the country, Alistair Bone goes on patrol with an SPCA Inspector.

Caroline does this awesome thing as the dog makes a snarling and scampering rush at her leg. The biter's a low slung lab/shepherd mix, with none of the charm of either parent. It's aiming fangs for about her ankle when she pirouettes and turns her back on it and kicks a work boot up in its face with a delicate movement, like a twenties flapper in a musical. The dog jerks its head up to avoid the boot but the movement spoils its aim. The jaws clamp briefly on the back leg of her blue SPCA inspector's uniform, but closes only on air and not the flesh it was looking to amputate. It snarls off and back, madder than hell.

Its anger's understandable. Where it lives is a tip. Its lawn is down there somewhere, under wild weeds and bits and pieces of shattered plastic and broken things. Tools in a toolkit rust in situ on the drive where they must have been untouched since at least November. There is an abandoned weed killer container with bite marks on it. The dogs, there are two, have no water.

Originally she had come to see the attack dog's mate, a little fox terrier. It greeted her with a yapping tirade and ran off. No-one answered the door and Caroline followed the foxie around the back where a ranchslider opened on to a deck. A ruffled young sleepy-head appeared. Caroline has a lovely tone and made her introductions using it. The body had time to claim no ownership of the dogs when one went for the inspector. She did her ninja-flapper move and then continued as remorselessly chipper as if it never happened. She says she rarely gets angry: "You can't, professionally and because a lot of people don't realise they are doing anything wrong. With many it's just what they have grown up with". The owner promises to give the dogs water and clean up the garden, Caroline promises to come back.

She is on call a lot. She yawns, there was a call-out at half-past nine last night to a dog that had wrapped itself around a tree on its chain. There was another one at 7.30 this morning to try to find a man with a dog wearing a muzzle it couldn't breathe through. At 8.30am there are 13 more routine visits on the job sheet, which she will get through if emergencies don't intervene. She has a degree in animal behaviour and has been doing this for two years. She will go to emergency calls anywhere between Te Aroha and Meremere and Raglan and will drive 500km on a regular day.

The dog house was job number two. The first was The Case of the Horse in a Small Area. A horse at a pony club had been left in a confined space taped off from the rest of the field it lives in. It can be seen from a state highway and was never going to avoid attention in Hamilton. Its ribs are visible, but its spine and the bones in its bum aren't, which means it isn't starving. It has plenty of hay and water and doesn't appear hurt or worried about anything.

The SPCA gets a lot of calls on this – a common farming practice known as breach feeding that is not illegal.

Another person turns up as Caroline does paperwork in the society's big battered Transit van and says they were concerned about the animal too and were about to call the SPCA also. Horses get a lot of love here, but it is dogs that are in the headlines.

Three children were savaged in three separate attacks in a single day. A boy remains in critical condition after the family pet went for his throat as he was eating.

Nine years ago a girl with a similar name to the inspector was in the news. Seven-year old Carolina Anderson was savaged by a dog in a park. There was an outcry and media went for a ride with a council dog catcher through South Auckland. He was an ex-policeman, the people he was dealing with were the kids of the people he used to arrest. Pit-bulls and variants sunned themselves on every cracked concrete deck down every graffitied right-of-way like sickly suburban crocodiles.

There was an endless supply said the dog catcher. He'd take one and they'd shrug and go get another, same day, from the bitch up the street that had just had a litter. Castrate the males, he said. It quietens them down and they can't breed more like them, he reckoned. It's possible he was talking about the dogs.

The next call is to another dog in distress, but it's locked inside another dump and no-one will answer the door. It's another mouldering picture of hopelessness and it's not hard to imagine someone getting a dog to distract them from their life and then giving up on that too. Caroline will come back with the council at a more convenient time.

Michelle Locke, the SPCA's funding and events manager, says the tough old South Auckland ex-policeman's recipe for reducing dog attacks wouldn't work by itself anyway. The society's looking at ways to get a de-sexing programme going. But she says what's really needed is training – of the dogs and their owners.

She thinks banning breeds – the Government's eventual response to the Carolina Anderson attack – wouldn't do much good either. Michelle had a red heeler-dingo cross back in Australia. It was trained to a level that kids could rock up to its bowl and start playing with its food and it would sit immediately and stay there until they were done.

Michelle says it takes money and time to get Kiwi dogs to be that good. "We would like to say here's your puppy, go home and teach it some of the basic stuff and we will start puppy lessons in a week or so. But we don't have the kind of money to do that, and owners have to be willing to put time in". And despite the training she says she would never leave any dog alone with a small child.

The next call is to a puppy in a state housing block. Someone's growing commercial quantities of sweetcorn in their front yard, there's a big green park strip down the middle of the solid looking units and kids play on bikes. Neighbours are home in abundance and come over to help and offer advice.

The puppy owners seem to be trying, there is a smokefree sticker on the door and a hole under the fence has been plugged with a piece of wood. Their baby dog is full of optimism and friendship, but has run itself out of water.

Someone is out the back but doesn't hear the door or see the need to answer it if they do. A neighbour deputises himself and jumps the fence and gets it a drink.

Caroline says inspectors have a lot of power under the Animal Welfare Act, she can get a search warrant if she feels the need. She hasn't so far. She has seen weapons but hasn't had any presented at her.

People sometimes get mad when she first turns up, but usually chill out when it becomes plain she is there to help. Seizing an animal is a last resort. She watches the armed animal cops on overseas TV, but would rather work here, though she wishes she was paid more. Starving dogs on chains make her sad.

The next call is to a stray cat. An elderly lady in a well-kempt block has a friendly black moggy hanging around. It has a notch out of its hip but no fleas and sniffs flowers and chomps biscuits happily out of a flora container it pushes round with its nose. The woman and the cat have clearly formed a bond, but the Good Samaritan can't keep it and wants the SPCA to take it away. They can't as their cat housing is full up.

Caroline inspects the cat and promises to put the woman further up the pickup list.

In the year to December 31, 2011 the society put down 423 cats and 486 of their kittens. Local vets do it, sweeping them off the mortal coil with a massive anaesthetic overdose that puts them out and takes them away in an instant. Usually it's on health grounds, but there are significant communities of feral cats in the society's area and they often can't be tamed enough to even be approached.

Seventy-three dogs and puppies died too as last summer's abandoned animal season just rolled on and on. The hope is that if a better desexing programme gets off the ground there will be less health issues and fewer unwanted animals.

Even with the economy not so good, the SPCA managed to adopt out over 400 abandoned cats and nearly 1000 kittens. One hundred and sixty-five dogs and some 200 puppies were re-homed too.

Last year they took well over 900 complaints about cats and dogs being abused. There were more than 200 others about cattle and sheep and horses and donkeys. Not a single prosecution was launched, as has been the case since 2007. Court action is expensive, even with the help of a local lawyer, so they try to educate people instead.

Caroline denies her balletic dog-defence kick was a planned thing. She can't even remember it. Some things stress her out, but not on the job. She's in it for the animals, not to meet beautiful people.

"You're making a difference, whether it's a little or a lot. And that makes up for the bad things".

 

HOW YOU CAN HELP

The SPCA is always looking for volunteers. Poo-cleaners are welcome and highly regarded members of the team. But you can avoid that and just work in the Op-shop or walk and play with dogs, or sit with and cuddle cats. Volunteers handy with a hammer and saw and such are a bonus, as there is an ongoing need for maintenance. Anyone who wants to help can give the SPCA at Frankton a call on 078474868.

- © Fairfax NZ News