John Williamson: We need to keep dogs restrained both at home and in the car

An unrestrained dog potentially becomes a projectile as it's hurled toward the windscreen in a sudden stop or crash Photo / 123rf

OPINION

It was with real anger that I read about the attack by dogs on Rex Roadley's sheep a couple of weeks ago. I know Rex; he farms not far from where I was born and raised near Maungaturoto.

I can imagine the real emotions welling as he buried the 56 high-value, sheep and tried to figure out how it happened. He may also have had a sense of satisfaction as he learned that the two dogs that did this deed had been shot.

Trained dogs and sheep go together in the hands of an experienced farmer, but that's not for any old dog.

City dogs will chase sheep because they run. They catch them and then, not knowing what to do with them, they maul them and the outcome is horrible. With the taste of blood then, that's it for those dogs.

We had a couple of dogs loose in our small mob three weeks ago. We only have a dozen sheep and they keep the grass under control on our small block. The ram had done his job and there was a newborn lamb as well, when the dogs started rounding them up.

We managed to catch the dogs and we knew where they came from. They had no registration tag and one had no collar. The owners weren't home and we had no means to tie them up, so we called the pound. There were some mixed feelings about that as we knew the owner would be in for a few hundred dollars to get the dogs back- but that's the price of having dogs run loose.

Animal Management arrived and the dogs happily jumped into the cages to await their owners' wrath and their having a talking to about unrestrained dogs. That's the real purpose of this column - the need to keep dogs restrained at home and in the car.

In a past life we ran a dog boarding business. It was a constant source of curiosity about how the dogs were delivered. Most just jumped out of the car, completely unrestrained from the back seat. Some jumped out of the boot while some had their own harness or cage. Some were chained on the deck of a ute but the ones that caused most alarm, were those that jumped off the driver's knee as the car door was opened.

Dogs are often seen as an extension of the family, so it's no surprise that they are regular passengers on our roads. Travelling with dogs in cars, if they are unrestrained, can be a huge distraction to the driver, which in turn puts other passengers and drivers at risk.

A study done in 2019 by car manufacturer Volvo, revealed that allowing pets to roam unrestrained while driving led to significantly more unsafe driver behaviour, more time distracted and increased stress for drivers and the animals.

The study followed 15 drivers and their dogs for more than 30 hours and compared dogs restrained in a harness, cage or seatbelt with unrestrained dogs in the cars.

They found that unsafe driver behaviour more than doubled, that driver distraction almost trebled and the stress, measured by heart rate in dogs and drivers, increased by 50 per cent with unrestrained dogs.

An unrestrained dog potentially becomes a projectile as it's hurled towards the windscreen in a sudden stop or crash.

New Zealand is out of line with many other countries who have laws with significant fines and demerits, even jail, for driving with unrestrained dogs. England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales require drivers to restrain dogs with a harness, seatbelt or a crate for small dogs, or a guard for larger dogs. Most states in Australia have similar laws but New Zealand only requires that dogs be chained while travelling on the deck of a ute.

The level of fines and demerits in New Zealand have not been revised or updated since 1999 and restraining dogs in cars should be one of those. It's hard to take seriously a Road to Zero strategy that doesn't address the whole road safety package.