January 27, 2013Comments are closed.dogs, Lost Dogs Home, RSPCA, Victorian Dog Laws
There’s not much you can get dog behaviorists, dog trainers and vets to agree on. But the majority do agree that you can’t reliably tell the breed of a dog by the way it looks. And now, the Supreme Court agrees too;
The Supreme Court has dealt the Baillieu government’s campaign to rid the state of dangerous dogs a major blow by granting a reprieve to two dogs deemed American pit bull terriers by Darebin and Monash councils.
The court overturned a decision by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which, agreeing with the councils, had ruled the dogs complied with the legal definition of a restricted breed and should be put down.
The Supreme Court ordered the two councils to pay more than $200,000 in legal fees and pound costs, a move expected to deter other legal challenges by local governments.
The two dogs at the centre of these Supreme Court challenges include, Rapta, who had been held at the RSPCA for 15 months, and another dog called Tia, who had been held at the Lost Dogs Home for 13 months.
See the full list of VCAT and Supreme Court challenges here.
This exercise in hysteria-based policy making has cost hundreds of innocent dogs’ lives and thrown dozens of families into turmoil as they spend months and thousands of dollars defending their pets from a government-mandated death.
And we are yet to see a single shred of evidence that the community is any safer.
It is time for Baillieu to admit his failure to listen to industry experts has resulted in unsuccessful, unfair and dangerous policy. It’s time to repeal Victoria’s BSL laws.
