The City Council has decided not to change the bylaw requiring dogs to be leashed in only some of the city’s parks.

Instead the Council will do more to publicise its already long list of fines and rules about dogs and their owners’ responsibilities. And it will consider tougher enforcement of the rules and how to give its dog control team a stronger presence. It has also begun a process to update information signs in parks and on streets about dog rules and will look again at which parks and other places should be banned to dogs or where they must be restrained.

The Council will also look at asking the Government to change the law so that other Council staff, such as parking officers, could also help enforce the city’s rules about dogs.

Councillor Sue Wells, who chairs the committee which looks after the issue, told the City Council last month that it could be costly to decide that all dogs must be on leashes at all times and it also would be difficult to enforce.

“We’d have to spend a fortune on dog exercise parks for a start because the law says we have to take dogs’ exercise needs into account,” she said.“We have a whole load of rules already, but if you look around you wouldn’t see a lot of dog owners obeying them all of the time.

“We need to do more to tell people what the rules are. Here’s just one example. Did you know that dogs on the footpath must be on a leash at all times?”

According to a report to last month’s Council meeting, the Christchurch dog control policy dates from 1997. It lets the Council declare any public place to be a prohibited dog area, or restrained dog area, or a dog exercise area.

The current Dog Control Bylaw sits under that policy and has extensive provisions.

Among them are a list of 15 public places which are prohibited dog areas.

It says all dogs on a road, and that includes footpaths, must be leashed. Dogs must be on leashes on 61 parks or reserves and on conservation areas of the Avon and Heathcote rivers and the estuary. Dogs are not to be within 10m of children’s playground equipment.

But there is evidence that many people are still not happy. In this year’s citizens survey, almost 60 per cent of those questioned mentioned wandering dogs as a city problem.

In the year to June 30 the Council’s Animal Control Section investigated 1673 complaints about dogs wandering, 322 complaints about them rushing at people, 202 complaints of dogs biting people and 66 cases of dogs in prohibited areas.

They seem big numbers, but considering the Council has 28,500 dogs registered it suggests fewer than 6% of dogs are allowed to wander, and that’s if the figure is based on every complaint being about a separate dog.

Cr Wells said the Council decision meant the issue would keep coming back for some time and there would be opportunities for the public to have a say. “It would’ve been nice to think this was one puppy we could put to bed, but we can’t. It’ll come back and the Council and the public will have more chances to look at it and decide about it.”

• If a dog is causing a nuisance in your neighbourhood or you wish to report an out-ofdate sign in your area, call the City Council’s Animal Control unit on 941 6643 or email animalcontrol@ccc.govt.nz More information about dogs is on the Council’s website, at www.ccc.govt.nz/animals