In June, Vincent Cashman was on the scene hours after a pit bull terrier turned on its owners in Cork city and attacked them.
Cashman, manager of the Cork Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which operates the dog warden service in the city, arrived just after the victims were taken to hospital.
He and the gardaí on the scene attempted to trap the dog with a catch-pole, a long rod with a rope leash at the end. The dog was to be euthanised by a vet standing by, but catching him was not easy.
“The dog is already fired up because he’s already attacked these other people [so] you want to get the job done as fast as you can,” he says. “So you’re working around the edge of a door, the edge of a window, trying to go in and catch the dog as calmly as possible.”
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[ Q&A: the ban on XL bully dogs - how will it work?Opens in new window ]
It did not work. With the dog growing more agitated and aggressive, the decision was made to shoot it instead.
Cashman says the idea of getting the armed response unit involved in a dog incident simply “wouldn’t have been heard of five or six years ago”.
The attack came just a few days after the 23-year-old Co Limerick woman Nicole Morey was killed by her two XL bully dogs, and the outcry eventually led Minister for Rural and Community Development Heather Humphreys to introduce new laws to ban XL bullies, the first ever ban on any dog breed in Ireland.
There might be more to come. The Minister’s department is in the midst of a major review of dog control legislation that could have significant implications for Ireland’s dog wardens.
There are about 50 full-time dog wardens around Ireland and they fall under the control of local authorities. Some of them are employed directly by the council while others are contracted out to private operators or animal charities such as the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ISPCA).
On Thursday the Minister announced that local authorities would receive an additional €2 million to hire 40 new dog wardens from 2025 in a move that recognises the increased demands for dog control and the resources required to enforce the pending ban on XL bully dogs.
“Public safety is my number one priority; this funding will help each local authority to ensure they have the necessary number of dog wardens in place,” Humphreys said.
[ Limerick dog attack: What is an XL bully and how dangerous are they?Opens in new window ]
One of the private operators currently working as a dog warden is Ian Kenny, who operates a number of dog control services, and has contracts with eight county councils.
Kenny says the work of a dog warden is underpinned by the Control of Dogs Act, introduced in 1986 as a measure to tackle the problem of stray dogs worrying livestock.
The Act sets out the responsibilities of a dog warden, which perhaps are not as wide ranging as people might imagine.
“People think that if it has four legs and a tail and it barks, that the dog warden will fix it. But it’s not that simple,” he says.
Dog fouling is not the responsibility of a dog warden, he says, since it falls under littering laws. Neither is dog barking, which is governed by noise pollution laws. Nor is dog welfare, broadly speaking. Nor is it the job of a dog warden to seize a dog just because someone calls giving out about their neighbour’s animal. As a general rule, he says, “unless it’s out straying, it’s not our business”.
Wardens have the power to check on dog licences, to fine people not having “effectual control” of their dog and to initiate prosecutions for violations. But mostly the job is as it has been for about 40 years: collecting strays and attempting to rehome them.
The backdrop has changed, however. John Colfer has been a dog warden in Wexford for 20 years and has seen big changes, mostly positive. When he started out, Wexford took in about 1,200 dogs a year – almost 25 a week – a figure that has dropped to around 600 and continues to fall. The number of dogs being euthanised has dropped too.
He puts the reduction in stray dogs down to “educational programmes over the last 20 years, with more rescue groups coming on board, and a big emphasis on neutering and spaying”.
But Colfer knows more than most the effect of high-profile dog attacks. In November 2022 a young boy, Alejandro Mizsan, was attacked by a 10-month-old XL bully outside his home in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, and suffered injuries to his face, body and legs. He had to be airlifted to Crumlin children’s hospital in Dublin after the attack, where he underwent several operations.
Like most dog wardens, Colfer is aware of a substantial number of other attacks that either went unreported or luckily turned out to be less serious.
“Myself and my colleagues have been called into some situations by the gardaí that through the mercy of God someone hasn’t been killed,” he says.
Laura Mulligan, a qualified dog trainer, has been dog warden for Mayo for the past eight years, during which she has seen three serious attacks.
The lower number is probably reflective of the rural nature of Mayo. Mulligan believes the rise in high-profile dog attacks is reflective of a number of factors. These include the increasing numbers of houses being left empty by commuters, and the growth in aggressive breeds of dogs, creating a dangerous combination of absent and inexpert owners not tuned in to their dogs needs or moods.
The danger doesn’t come just from XL bullies, she says, stressing that large dogs typically associated with being guard dogs – German shepherds, Dobermans, Rottweilers, even Dalmatians – are bred to have temperaments that do not necessarily suit the modern urban and suburban life.
“Humans and canines have a bond because we’re both very sociable,” she says. “But if you’re gone for 10 hours a day and they’re in a small confined space, you can imagine the impact that would have.”
Will the new ban help any of this? There is little consensus. The ISPCA, which operates a number of dog warden services for councils, has been highly critical, arguing that similar bans in the UK have not worked and warning of a possible spike in dogs being abandoned and euthanised.
But other dog wardens believe there is little option. For Vincent Cashman, some people simply aren’t equipped to have specialised dogs such as these as family pets.
“Everyone can walk a dog when it’s nice and calm – clip it on a lead, walk it down the pavement, and everything is hunky dory,” he says. “But do you have the same control over the same dog if he becomes agitated? If he reverses that aggression on to you?”
Such dogs can weigh as much as a fully grown man, he says, and “it’s in those initial few minutes when most of the damage will be done – the dog will get tired, but the damage he can do before he gets tired can be fatal”.
Mulligan is not opposed to the ban, but believes there is already some legislation on the books that, if better implemented, could do as good a job as outright bans on specific breeds.
For example, there is already legislation on the books through various amendments of the Control of Dogs Act – specifically the one that relates to guard dogs.
“If someone has two large dogs in a residence and says, ‘I have them for guarding my property’, you can ask them ‘So you’re telling me they’re specifically guard dogs and not family pets’, and then ask them whether they’ve got the necessary signage, secure fencing to prevent them getting out, and the other requirements under the law,” she says.
The coming years are likely to see significant change in the laws governing how wardens do their jobs, much of which has yet to be determined.
For instance, a great amount of detail of the XL bully ban is yet to be finalised, even the precise definition of an XL bully, which is not a kennel club-defined breed but a grouping of dogs with similar characteristics.
“We’re still waiting for the statutory instrument to come out to see how this is going to be implemented,” says Mulligan.
That’s true of any legislation to come out of the department’s working group on the dog control legislation, which is still working on a wider overhaul of laws that could have significant implications for dog wardens.
“It will be the dog wardens who will have to deal with this on a weekly basis, and on a day-to-day basis, and we’re just waiting to see,” she says.
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