What rights do we have? - Regarding dog fines/pound fines etc

Hi all, we came home from our local sunday market today to find our dog gone and a rough/hasty note scribbled on a scrap piece of paper stuck to our front door from the pound.

DH rang them, and apparently our dog dug a hole into the neighbours yard and killed her chooks. We now have our dog back, but she has now been classed as a 'Menacing Dog' and must thus be treated exactly like a dangerous dog.
We have found the hole, but all of the corrogated sheeting that had previously lined the base of the fence under the dirt is now missing.

Now we have had this happen previously 8 or so months ago when our friends dog, that we were babysitting at the time while he was away working for 2 months, dug a hole under the fence and killed the neighbours chooks as well.

Back then, our neighbour promised to make sure that the corrugated sheeting was in place all along the fence & that there were no holes in it - he confirmed it all a week later and had DH check it to make sure it was all ok - and our neighbour also promised to keep the chooks on the other side of their backyard in the other enclosure.
Within two months of all this taking place, the chooks were back in their old enclosure (including the chooks we bought them to replace the ones that were killed).

Now we have to pay fines for it - which we are quite willing to pay, and will be replacing the neighbours chooks again, but the blame has been solely laid on us, as it was our dog that did it and not apparently because of any of our neighbours actions.

I just had a few questions regarding all this:

1. We live in a built up area in Victoria, and from what I have been able to research, the number of chooks allowed on a property in a built up area is 4-6 chooks, and no roosters. Just wondering if this is in fact true? As prior to this incident the neighbour owned 10-12 chooks.

2. What rights do we have regarding our dog, who must now be muzzled when out walking, and caged all day when at home, when she is previously used to having lots of room to run around in and has never been muzzled in her life? (She is now 7, and not likely to live past 11 years of age).

3. She is what is considered to be a large dog because of her breed, but she looks more like a medium sized dog as she is so small for her breed (she was the runt of the litter). She has never harmed an animal before, not even a cat, which she hates cats with a vengeance as when she was 6months+ the neighbours cats where we used to live terrorised her on a daily basis. She has never bitten me, DH or our DS, even in a play fight, she always keeps her mouth closed, and has gotten along well with every dog she has ever met, both large & small. She doesn't even go after the birds that terrorise her in our backyard. She also loves meeting new people, and would lick someone to death if she had the chance, never bite them. Yes she barks when people walk past our house, but thats only her warning to them to say "Stay off my property".
Is there any way that we can get the label 'Menacing Dog' removed from her?

4. Is there anything else we can do to make it easier for her?

She is such a sook, and just last night she was curled up asleep on the couch with DH, her head in his lap. I personally have not liked dogs since I was a young kid, and was pretty much petrified of them by the time I first met her, but she has just snuck into my heart and I love her to bits now. DH would be devastated if something were to happen to her, she is his baby girl, and he was so upset when we got home today and found that she wasn't there and the note on the door.
I guess I just want some advice to help DH, and to give him something to work with instead of just moping around the house like he's been doing for the last hour and a half.

Thank you for reading this.

I'm sorry to hear this happened to you - in relation to your rights regarding your dog being declared a dangerous dog - I'm sorry to say but unless you fight this in court you have no rights. You can google "dangerous dogs rights" something along those lines and you can see lots of support on line but unless you take it to court to fight it, you can't get out of your dog being declared a dangerous dog.

I really feel for you, our two dogs escaped 2 years ago and allegedly killed a goat. Our option was to fight to have them declared dangereous dogs or to have them put down. Due to their breed (not pit bulls or anything like that but just active dogs) and other situations we made the heartbreaking decision to put them down.

I am sorry your in this situation and I hope that you are able to keep your dog under the dangerous dog classification. I would do some googling re the chickens and the fence arrangements but I think you'll find that because it is seen as your responsiblity to keep the dog contained, then it won't matter what happened on the other side of the fence.

Hugs and good luck, sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

It might be different in Victoria, but in NSW you can contest the "dangerous dog" restrictions. I used to work in local government here and there was a lot of stuff to go through before a dog can actually be declared dangerous so I don't know how they have done it to your dog so quickly? Again it might be different from state to state though...

I would write a letter to your local council explaining your side of the story. I would also be telling them the steps you are going to take to ensure something like this doesn't happen again. Fair enough for the chook owner to reinforce his side of the fence, but you need to do the same as well to make sure your dog can't dig out of your yard, and if she is going to continue to do it then you may need to consider that she needs to be caged/chained up when she isn't under supervision. Do you have a vet and/or any friends that can write a reference for your dog? It might not help at all but I guess it is worth a try.

The number of chooks allowed may differ between council areas, so I would give your local council a call tomorrow and find out. I know here there are no restrictions on numbers just as long as they don't cause noise/odour issues.

Have a read of your local laws - I found this:

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151. POULTRY S27

(1) A person without a Permit must not keep or allow to be kept on any premises
within a residential area more than five (5) fowls.

Penalty: 5 Penalty Units.

(2) A person must not keep or allow to be kept on any premises within a
residential area any poultry other than poultry which is confined in a poultry
house or similar enclosure. Such poultry house or similar structure must meet
any building regulations or planning requirements.

Penalty: 5 Penalty Units.

(3) In determining whether to grant a Permit, the Council must have regard to
any standards in Schedule 1 of this Local Law and any guidelines determined
by Council from time to time.

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In most places you can contest the dangerous dog ruling, but in the end it it your responsibility to keep you dog under control and if she got out and caused damage then there may not be a lot that you can do about the ruling. It would be worth contacting the ranger/pound and asking what appeal rights you have - they will be required to tell you and generally if you seem genuine will tell you what they think your chance of success is.

Unfortunately, once a dog has a taste for things like that it is often very difficult to make them change their ways and it may be that if you fix the fence and replace the chooks you are facing the same situation again in the near future.

In relation to your neighbour and the chooks, I would have thought that it may be better to try and keep him on side - it may be that he could assist with getting the dangerous dog ruling overturned. The council will be able to tell you how many chooks he should be able to have but you can't force him to keep them in a certain area - unless there are rules in your area about how far their enclosure has to be from fences, dwellings etc - there is here - they can't be less than 8 metres from any part of a house.

Good luck - I hope that you can get it all sorted out.

Thank you everyone. DH managed to talk to the neighbours son yesterday, and he's going to call the pound and try to get the'Manacing Dog' label removed.

She hasn't actually been labelled as a Dangerous Dog though, it's the step before Danderous Dog that she's been labelled as. 'Menacing Dogs' just have to be treated as dangerous gods in case they do turn dangerous, which I think would be highly unlikely for her, she's been sulking since yesterday and won't even go near the fence when we take her outside to do her business. She knows she did something really really bad.

The neighbour's son also agreed that when temptation is dangled in the face every day for months on end, even the most placid dog will eventually snap, so he's not blaming her. He actually likes her a lot, as when he and his brothers/sisters go round to visit their mother (who is in her late 80's and almost completely deaf) she barks really loudly a couple of times and that lets his mother know that someone is there to visit her, it's the same for when people come onto her property that shouldn't be there.

According to him the only reason they actually called the pound was because we weren't home and they couldn't get her out of their backyard. She only killed 3 chooks too, which is still bad, but less bad than it was, the found the 4th chook up in a tree last night, completely unharmed.

So, the only thing we have to worry about at the moment is the fines, which we will find out in approx 2 weeks as when DH went and picked her up last night they hadn't even started to process the paperwork.

She's currently confined to the kitchen/laundry, and we are organising with the neighbours to have the fence completely replaced in july/august after we get our tax returns. It will involve having the fence sunk about 3ft into the ground with a concrete base so that she can no longer dig under.

It probably didn't help that there are gaps in the fence currently that allow her to see through it and see the chooks every day.

Also, the local animal laws people don't seem to care about the number of chooks the neighbour has as there have been no prior complaints. It doesn't bother us really about her having them, it's just when she has them in a spot that provided the original temptation for our dog, but we know we can't do anything about it even if we wanted to as what they do in their own backyard is their own business.

Besides, we love the eggs she gives us every 2 months :) Lots of double yolkers.

So, thank you everyone for your help, and thank you Kazbah for those laws too, I tried to find them yesterday and couldn't find any reference to them at all. I'll save them in word in case they are needed in future.

you could probably get a temperament test done by a behavourist and contest the 'menacing/dangerous' dog title....thats how it has been done here where i live...as we had one of our males 'snap' at a dog show....was labelled dangerous and had to go through a temp. test...passed and the label of dangerous was lifted :)

I was also wondering if you do contest the menacing dog label whether part of that arrangement could be that you offer to do a dog run that she will be in while you guys are out (i am assuming that, like most dogs, she probably would only be tempted when you guys arent home). we used to have one for our dog and she had a runner chain attached to her kennel for shelter and she still had access to her yard etc while we were out...

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She's currently confined to the kitchen/laundry, and we are organising with the neighbours to have the fence completely replaced in july/august after we get our tax returns. It will involve having the fence sunk about 3ft into the ground with a concrete base so that she can no longer dig under.

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As a temporary fix, can you dig down around the fence, attach chicken wire to the bottom of your fence and then put the dirt back in.

We have done that at our place, and the dogs haven't managed to dig under it. Ours goes down 1 foot, but you could go deeper if you needed to.