New teeth in dog legislation can be costly for owners

New teeth in dog legislation can be costly for owners
By MARDY BACIGALUPO, The Londoner

If you are a pit bull owner, you only have about five weeks (until Oct. 28) to get your dog spayed or neutered and make sure it’s muzzled and leashed while in public. If you own a different breed of dog – one deemed dangerous – there are some things you should know, too.
Effective Aug. 29, when the amendments to the provincial Dog Owner’s Liability Act – called DOLA for short – kicked in, if your dog bites or attacks another dog or person or its behaviour constitutes a menace to the safety of people or domestic animals, the penalties are more serious.
You could face a fine of up to $10,000 ($60,000 for corporations), six months in jail and the court will be able to make restitution orders requiring convicted persons to make compensation or restitution to victims. Prior to Aug. 29, the maximum fine was $5,000 and there was no jail sentence.
“You have basically 45 days to make sure you have a muzzle that fits the requirements and is most appropriate for your pit bull,” explains Jay Stanford, division manager, environmental programs and customer relations. “All owners of dogs should be alerted that these changes to the provincial rules apply to any dog that has a tendency to be aggressive. Take the time to take that dog to obedience training – which should have happened in the first place – because if your dog happens to bite now, the rules are much tougher; whether you have a pit bull or not.”
But Mr. Stanford says there is no answer currently for the definition of aggression.
“It’s a very big unknown,” he says. “DOLA refers to the word menacing as opposed to aggression. The definition of menacing or the threshold of menacing/not menacing may not be known until it is tested in the court system. This area is viewed as being problematic with respect to enforcing DOLA. Over time it will become clearer.”
Yvette Van Veen, a London pet behaviour consultant and pet columnist for The Londoner, is concerned about the definition of aggression as well. She says aggression can mean many things to many people.
If we were talking people and not dogs, and you disagree with someone, is that aggressive, she asks? If you refuse to participate (passively) is that aggressive? What about a lawsuit? What about a harsh word? What about slamming a door? What about punching someone? What is okay and what is not?
“The answer is so subjective, which is part of the concern for the bylaw,” she says. “If a puppy nips, is that aggression? I ask in my classes for everyone who has a nipping puppy to raise a hand. Almost all do. That would make puppy nipping fall into ‘normal’ behaviour that needs to be addressed, but not necessarily aggression. If a puppy nips and breaks the skin, how does one determine it was a nip, and not an aggressive puppy? I have seen puppies eight weeks of age ready to tear a strip off someone. It's frightening to see a ball of fluff that is in such a rage.”
Within the amended liability act is a new section called pit bull controls regulations. Among other things, it prohibits the breeding, transferring, abandoning, importing and training to fight pit bulls, except as permitted by the Act or regulations under it.
It provides grandfathering provisions for pit bulls, search and seizure of dugs under a warrant (or without a warrant under certain conditions) and delivery of seized or abandoned pit bulls to a pound operated by or on behalf of a municipality, Ontario or designated body. (They can be exempted for research facilities – they are allowed to own, breed and so forth).
In addition to provincial legislation, a new municipal bylaw will regulate and provide for licensing rules of pit bulls. According to Mrs. Van Veen, there is ample evidence that breed specific bans don’t work. She says the city officials currently working on creating the bylaw are considering placing nearly impossible restrictions on pit bull owners.
“I think if there were more preventative measures in place, the safety of the community would be increased and I don’t think we would need the breed specific ban,” she says. “All dogs can be dangerous and it’s serious regardless of the breed. Toy breeds have killed children. I’ve seen some very serious aggression in toy breeds. It’s not pleasant.”
She says owning a dog should involve a similar process as obtaining a driver’s license. You need to gain knowledge – educate yourself about the rules of the road. And when you speed or find yourself in a situation that violates the laws of the highway traffic act, maybe the first time you’ll get a warning. Maybe you’ll get a fine.
Similarly, if you have a dog – of any breed – and it indicates dangerous or aggressive tendencies and someone alerts officials about it, maybe the first time you would get a warning. Maybe some suggestions for encouraging better dog behaviour. She says part of the problem is people aren’t educated first and therefore don’t know how to train their dog so it isn’t aggressive. They may not know their own actions are in fact encouraging aggressive behaviour.
“The biggest trigger for aggression in dogs is tying a dog out on a cable for a prolonged period of time. Depending on the dog, this will definitely lead to aggression,” Mrs. Van Veen says. “I am not convinced that after the fact enforcement is going to work. There needs to be a focus that educates because as long as people don’t know what to do, I’m not sure what they will learn from being punished.”
What may happen is people could hide their dogs from the public eye. Mrs. Van Veen says maybe dog owners will walk their dogs late at night so no one sees what kind of dog they have. They could also become afraid of those who enforce the bylaw – although the city is not sure yet who that may be.
Lack of human or animal socialization could also cause a dog to become aggressive. Ignoring your dog while it’s in the backyard all day long could also cause aggression.
This kind of education has proven useful in Calgary where 90 per cent of dogs are licensed, compared to London’s 50 per cent.
Mrs. Van Veen says it’s nearly impossible for dog owners in Calgary not to know their responsibility before they buy their dog.
“We would love to have every single dog licensed and then some,” Mr. Stanford says. “Calgary has things in place that we can’t have here in Ontario (because of downloading from the provincial government). We can learn how we can get to a certain point from Calgary’s example. They have some very tough laws because of the province.”
According to Mr. Stanford, there are currently about 24,000 licensed dogs in London. A little more than 700 of them are pit bulls. One could assume there are more than that in the city, but he says it’s tough to know for sure. It’s something the city is working on.
What complicates this is the definition of a pit bull. Something Mrs. Van Veen says needs clarity.
“Right now, many people are looking at their dogs and wondering, “Does my dog fall under the law? It's a mutt, a mixed breed, does that animal count as a pit bull? No one knows,” Mrs. Van Veen says. “Perhaps if politicians are looking at eliminating ‘fighter dogs’, then they should echo and enforce ‘game bred-fighter dogs’, which is technically illegal under the SPCA's mandate. Game bred refers to dogs that have been bred with the tenacity and ability to fight regardless of breed. I think the Ontario government would have been better focusing on game bred, rather than a specific breed.”
On Sept. 12, a public information meeting was held to hear concerns from Londoners regarding the proposed bylaw. Before that meeting, the soonest the bylaw could have been passed was Sept. 19. After the Sept. 12 meeting, the environment and transportation committee recommended city staff find more information in response to a handful of unanswered questions raised by the public.
The next time the committee meets is this Monday, Sept. 26. But Mr. Stanford says they won’t even have all the answers by then. He says it will probably be late October – after he attends a provincially organized training session for people involved in enforcing these bylaws – before he has the answers they are looking for.
“Our priority is to protect the public in London and to do that we have to think about what are the rules that need to be in place,” he explains. “One of the concerns is, what is a pit bull? That’s a very good question and we don’t know how to answer that so we will look to the province to help us interpret that.”
Ms. Van Veen hopes when the bylaw is finally written, it will consider that all dogs can be dangerous and that bylaws don’t need to be breed specific.

You will notice I bolded the 2nd 1/2 as this is the city bylaw proposal we were fighting against. Although, not what you could call a victory, we did give the city a challenge and given us more time. I'm still planning on going to the meeting on Monday to see what is brought up and if any of the proposals have been dropped or only put on hold. I will keep you posted.