An 11-year-old boy has stitches after he was attacked by a pair of roaming dogs in south Auckland on Monday.
Meanwhile, a local dog owner said she’s having nightmares after her ageing pooch was assaulted by another dog the very same day.
Residents in Māngere Bridge are becoming increasingly concerned as unsupervised and aggressive dogs roam the streets.
It seemed like a regular Monday afternoon when local mum Amie Clough watched her son ride off on his bike.
Then the phone rang.
“Literally, he’d just left the house two minutes and I get a phone call from a random number saying I’m with your son and he’s just been bitten by a dog,” she said.
“Oh, it was pure panic and sort of adrenaline mode. I was almost in disbelief when the guy rang and it was just hearing [my son’s] voice like ‘mum I’m just down the road’ and it was just heartbreaking.”
Clough ran down the road to find her son bleeding and rushed him to A&E where he got stitches on his left leg.
“He’s just had his dressings changed again today and, like most kids, you don’t give them as much credit as [they deserve] for actually being quite resilient I think,” she said.
“He’s still relatively immobile, can’t walk for long periods and is quite sore.”
Clough thanked the pedestrians who stopped to assist her son and helped shift his bike.
“They were super helpful,” she said.
‘Shaking him like a ragdoll’
Later that day, 14-year-old dog Odie was also attacked.
Odie’s owner, who asked to keep her name private, said the attacking dog squeezed under its fence and sprinted towards them.
“Right on the corner of our street, a dog just suddenly came up behind us and it just made a beeline for my dog and grabbed him round the butt and lifted him into the air, and was just shaking him like a ragdoll,” she said.
“I was like screaming my lungs out for someone to please help and I was kicking the other dog.”
She estimated the attack lasted two minutes before a passerby intervened.
“This guy appeared, and he was holding this… I thought it was a bat but I think it might have actually been a log,” she said.
“And then he ran at the dog and the dog ran off and he, like, chased it down. I didn’t see where it went because I rushed to my dog.”
Odie’s injuries were severe.
His skin was torn in three places with deep bites on his body, and his age meant the vets had to staple his wounds closed without anaesthetic.
Odie’s owner said the ordeal was traumatising for both of them.
“I was sure in that moment that my dog was about to be killed and that it would come after me next, and because I’m pregnant as well, so I was also really scared about what damage might have been inflicted on me and my baby,” she said.
“I had a lot of nightmares. I know my dog whimpers throughout the night too, so he’s having nightmares.”
She said Animal Management responded quickly and found the attacking dog the next day.
“They got photos. They got photos of the receipts from the vet bills. Yeah, they were really good and then within 24 hours they had gone round to the house and seized the dog as well and it’s now impounded.”
‘A proactive approach’
But Amie Clough said aggressive dogs were an ongoing issue and needed a preventative approach.
By the end of the week, the two dogs that attacked her son still hadn’t been found and she had gone days without any further contact from Animal Management.
Meanwhile, her fellow residents were flooding the local Facebook page with reports of similar run-ins.
“You know bi-weekly there’s people putting messages up about roaming dogs and having been chased by a dog or saying that there’s dogs that are looking aggressive,” Clough explained.
“There needs to be just a proactive approach. Someone monitoring the area and looking out for these dogs to make it safer for everybody.”
Until the problem was solved, Clough said she was too nervous to go walking in her own neighbourhood.
“I mean I walk daily in the streets and now I can’t, you know, go out there until I know that at least these dogs that are local have been found and dealt with.”
Auckland Council established roaming dog patrols last year, which Manukau Ward Councillor Lotu Fuli said had massively improved response times.
“We’ve seen our response times from our proactive team have been very good,” she said.
“So, for example, there was an incident at a local school in my ward. The school called over three dogs on the field and the team was out within minutes once they made that call.”
But with limited resources, the patrols couldn’t be everywhere at once.
Dog owners asked to ‘step up’
Animal Management manager Elly Waitoa urged dog owners to take responsibility for their pets.
“The council currently receives around 40,000 requests for service each year, around 65% of which are reports of roaming dogs,” she said in a statement.
“In order for response times to be faster and for our teams to be able to carry out more proactive work, we really need dog owners to step up and stop allowing their dogs to roam.”
Fuli said resourcing for animal management was an issue she hoped the council could address as part of its annual plan in late May.
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