Reviewing the dog news in New Zealand with editors comments. Someone needs to keep reviewing how our dogs are doing in society.
A couple and their two pet dogs were forced to flee a burning yacht off Maud Island in the outer Marlborough Sounds yesterday.
The couple and their pets were forced to abandon their stricken yacht Celebrity after it burned and sank in 17 metres of water off Southward Point, Maud Island, about 2pm. MORE>>
Two dogs locked in a car in direct sunlight in Lower Hutt are lucky to be alive after the temperature inside the vehicle climbed to 42.5 degrees, Wellington SPCA says.
The dogs had been locked in the car at Avalon Park for at least 90 minutes before SPCA staff were alerted around 11am yesterday.
Inspector Ben Lakomy found the dogs panting and in distress.
They were in a wire crate, without any water. The windows were open a few centimetres but the temperature inside the car was recorded at 42.5 degrees celsius.
He said they were lucky to be alive. MORE>>
A courier driver bitten by a dog in Te Anau said he did not want to make a formal complaint to police but was forced to by the dog owner's response.
Matthew Freese was delivering a package to an address in Te Anau when he was bitten on the back of the leg by Storm, a german shepherd, last month.
Mr Freese said he placed the package in the open doorway and turned to leave when the dog attacked him from behind.
His pants were torn and he suffered puncture wounds to the back of his leg which required medical attention.
The Southland District Council decided to classify the dog as dangerous at a meeting on Wednesday, meaning it will have to be muzzled when taken out in public. MORE>>
A man is in hospital after being bashed to the ground by three men who lay in wait at a dairy to steal his pet dog over the weekend.
The 38-year-old had cycled Napier's Pirimai Plaza Dairy with his pure-bred English bulldog Bella, aged three, about 2pm on Sunday when he was punched by the men without warning.
The man was taken to Hawke's Bay hospital with a badly broken jaw and was transferred to Palmerston North Hospital yesterday for additional surgery.
A staff member at the dairy said he was unaware the attack had happened until police arrived at the scene.
When he regained consciousness he discovered that the dog, which had been on a leash and tied securely to his bicycle, had been taken.
Mr Campbell said the dog was a beloved family pet and described it as having a "placid" nature.
More than 110 puppies a year will be born in the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind’s new guide dog centre in Manurewa.
Five litters with a total of 42 puppies have been born there since October.
The centre was officially opened recently by Manukau city councillor Alf Filipaina.
All guide dog puppies will now be bred at the new centre, says breeding services manager Melinda Dawson. more>>
A Kapiti woman who nursed a sick dog back to health says a council officer told her he was "a lemon" that needed to be put down. Donna Jamieson, 44, rescued her dog Huxley - also known as Fat Boy - from a Horowhenua animal shelter about a year ago. While the basset hound was in her care, she repeatedly took him to the vet, spending more than $1000 on drugs and other treatments.
Kapiti Coast District Council says it received multiple complaints about the dog's noise, but had not got to the point of telling her to put it down.
Ms Jamieson said when Huxley was first taken to the vet, he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, as well as blood clots in his ears that stopped him from hearing properly. MORE>>
Dogs can sniff out unfair situations and show a simple emotion similar to envy or jealousy, Austrian researchers say. Dogs sulked and refused to "shake" paws if other dogs got treats for tricks and they did not, said Friederike Range, an animal psychologist at the University of Vienna, who led the study into canine emotions.
"It is a more complex feeling or emotion than what we would normally attribute to animals," said Range.
The study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also showed dogs licked and scratched themselves and acted stressed when they were denied rewards given to other dogs.
Other studies have shown monkeys often express resentful behavior when a partner receives a greater reward for performing an identical task, staging strikes or ignoring what they view as inferior compensation.
It turns out dogs are able to show a similar, if less sensitive, response, said Range in a telephone interview.
In a series of experiments using different breeds of dogs, the researchers looked at how two animals sitting next to each other reacted to unequal rewards after handing a paw to a researcher.
Dogs not given a treat licked their mouths, yawned, scratched and showed other signs of stress and stopped performing the task, Range said.
To show this was not just because the animals were not getting food, the researchers then tested the dogs alone and found that in this situation the envious canines cooperated longer before stopping.
"It is really about the unequal distribution of the reward," Range said. "If it was only about frustration they would stop at the same time."
ANOTHER sotry about it... written in a different way.
Southland District Council regulatory services group manager Lindsay McKenzie said many dogs that moved into the council's jurisdiction that should be chipped weren't.
"It's a requirement of the act. We enforce it but obviously some councils in New Zealand don't," he said.
Many owners were unaware of the law, asking why previous councils had not enforced it, Mr McKenzie said.
Councils were technically breaking the law by not enforcing microchipping, he said.
"It's inconvenient, it's inconsistent.
Perhpas Councils have better things to do with their time!
(...)
Microchipping was not a top priority unless the dog was wandering, menacing or unregistered, a spokesman said.
"Essentially if a dog doesn't do anything to bring itself to our attention we're not going out of our way to chase them down and get them chipped."
Invercargill City Council animal control officer Steven Boyd said while owners were liable for fines under the law, the council was not actively pursuing or issuing fines itself.
An estimated 90 per cent of owners were complying with the microchipping laws in the region, he said.
So what's the problem?
The attack happened when the occupational therapist went to Kenrick's house at Pakipaki, south of Hastings, on August 27 to treat Kenrick's mother.
The woman had been to the house before and had never noticed a dog. She knocked on the door several times then shouted to her patient, but received no response.
She walked to the side of the property. As she went through an open gate, a black medium-sized pit bull terrier ran at her from the back of the property.
The dog bit her many times on her left elbow, left thigh and calf, and right index finger, inflicting serious wounds.
Kenrick's lawyer, Richard Stone, said there was a sign on the property warning visitors about the dog, which was usually kept behind two gates.
If you have a dog that has attacked like this before, and it's not restrained.... then the fault lies with the owner. It appears that the owner did know about his dog's behavioural history, and therefore should have done the right thing way before this happened.
If you have a backyard, and you don't want people to go that way, LOCK the gate door!! helps keeps the burglars away too.
