A 14-month-old American Staffy – let’s call him Buddy – was visiting a friends house, when he escaped by popping out of a fly-screened window.
Thankfully, the local ranger from Leeton Shire Council collected Buddy after a neighbour reported him as wandering lost.
Buddy was microchipped and his details were current. This should have meant he should have been held for at least 7 days (or 14 days if microchipped) under NSW legislation and reunited with his owner who was looking for him. But the ranger failed to find the microchip.
The ranger also decided not to drive Buddy to the pound. Instead, he drove Buddy to the local rubbish tip, took out his rifle and shot him in the head.
When questioned, the ranger claimed Buddy, “was barking at (the neighbour) from the mailbox”, and had been “acting viciously”.
Not so viciously however, that the ranger wasn’t able to load, unload, secure and then shoot Buddy, single-handedly.
Buddy’s owners are understandably upset at the way the Leeton Council officer handled their pet in his hour of need;
“Firstly we were not contacted … we should have been contacted and given a chance to defend (Buddy).
“Dogs can’t speak up for themselves, so I think we deserved the right to be contacted before anything else happened.
“The other thing is the way (Buddy) was put down … I see it as very inhumane.
“When your dog is (impounded) you should be notified, given the chance to defend it and be told how it was euthanised.”
Seems pretty reasonable. Unfortunately for this family, the system has failed and now their pet is dead.
The story mirrors other cases in NSW;
– Ninja the kelpie pup, who was taken from his family and shot by a Walgett Shire Council ranger,
– Charlie the great dane, who was shot at the tip rather than impounded by Gwydir Shire Council Council (along with an elderly deaf, blind dachshund who died after mishandling by Council staff),
– CJ a bull breed, who was ‘oopsie’ killed by Albury Pound while her owner waited for her release,
– Nikki and Rocket jack russell pups, who were killed by Maitland City Council while their owner struggled to raise the nearly $1,000 needed for their release,
– and Gloucester Shire Council who was found by local animal lovers to be shooting dogs and pups and dumping them at the tip.
While pounds accept, and continue to be excused for killing, our fur-family members will never be safe.
Why is it that rangers are not employed for having some type of interest in animal welfare? – should this not be part of the job description?The taxpayers paying their wages expect that they carry out their duties competently and serve the community – I do not see being lazy and carrying out duties in an incompetent fashion as serving the community. These errors are the result of incompetence and laziness and result in the death of a loved family member – professionals get sued for incompetently carrying out their duties – the same rules should apply here. Sadly we do not have adequate consequences in place to prevent this happening in future.
The only vicious one in this case is the animal with two legs.
Disgusting, I thought we were further from the cave door than this. These rangers should be sacked immediately and the councils should be ashamed to be associated with them or they themselves should step down. The time is here when the people have to rise up and let these tossers know that “enough is enough”.
Totally unacceptable. Councils get a bad wrap at the best of times, these barbaric inept uneducated actions do them no help!!. I have tried in the past to gain employment at a council and they make you jump through hoops to even get to the first step of the interview process, make you answer questions and give scenarios of your actions in different situtations. Seems you need to be a Rhodes scholar to get in, yet the neanderthals they are employing don’t seem to have a brain cell between them !!……..Overpaid, lazy, brainless, uncaring twits!!!
Sounds like the RSPCA! When are the public going to demand a full investigation into these horrific incidents? Councils, RSPCA, etc are a law unto themselves.
I wonder if “Buddy” was wearing a collar with registration details, microchips have been know to fail but still no excuse for not holding the dog for a minimum period. What constitutes “acting viciously” I can imagine a 14 month old was looking for someone to play with and if it was only the neighbours assessment of him barking, then again not good enough. I’m sure Rangers see the worst of humanity too often but this seems very harsh.
So what disciplinary action did councils take against workers who breach their rules and regs?
Oh that’s right: none.
I’ve had enough of this, lets get a campaign happening, if the gun lobbyist can raise enough power to do the things they do, I am quite sure the passion of dog lovers can do better and a make these arseholes pay…
Dr Gosnell
Who the hell do rangers think they are???? God??? Bloody hell. And they continue to be excused and hidden from social escrutiny. This obviously encourage them to keep doing whatever they want to do to anybody they want to, even people! Disgusting. Undesirable creatures of evil! Ignorants that hate animals or incapable of handling them and do whatever their crooked minds decided to do. How sick these people are.
This is disgraceful!! this man shouldn’t be in this job! get rid of him he’s the real mut
One hopes that this is investigated properly and reports made public, how many times has this happened? Does the RSPCA have the right to get involved, I hope so. There is no way the rangers actions can be justified, I hope he is held accountable for his actions and punished accordingly.
several times, once including my sisters dog, and the police, and alot of lies and several gunshots.
oh and then several thousand dollars in fines, good times good times
This happened to my daughters dog as well a few years ago..
we also live in leeton
with microchips, I do know that they also “Move” through the animals body, just because its injected in between shoulder blades means nothing one of my dog’s chip eventually made its way down his front leg. They need to fully scan a dog before saying “no chip”
This is disgusting. Clearly the ranger doesn’t care for the job. The rangers need to be treated as a criminal for such disrespect. If one of us caught a loose dog and shot it we would be dragged across the fire pit. SHAME SHAME SHAME!
The Public should make every effort to tell their story to everybody they know, and Name these ruthless dont care for animals attitude – I am just doing my Job – Rangers, in any way they find possible!!!
Society will turn against these rangers ( and hopefully their Family ) in towns where they have to interact with people on a personal level, – they will then change their attitude towards the job they do.
You dont let a Child molester work with children – so you dont let somebody that dont have the passion for animals work with animals – Period
The Councils and higher authorities should take ownership of this issue!!!!!
Dogs in particuliar are peoples children and if a dog is chipped then every effort should be made to return their pet back to them – not what this trigger happy thug of a ranger did…….
I am sure my 14 Mth old Rotti would only be playing, and I have seen certain So Called Rangers approach a dog with a big stick with a lasso on it, and a natural instinct would be to bark and run away, and I read other comments about councils employing, people who do have some basic animal instinct’s I do find this action on Buddy, Very disturbing,
Get on to Bleats ,and see if they can take action against this. I am sure that the council have not acted as prescribed under the Micro-chipping act .All council officers should have scanners on board and as you say shell if they could get it in and out of a van and secure and shoot the dog single handedly ,how could they not scan the dog .If the dog was behaving in a vicious manner there are still protocols to go through and the owners should be contacted ,not cowboy justice and inhumane euthanasia
I hope we don’t pay these people who think its ok to shoot animals when they have a home .You cowboys .If it were my dog I would hunt you down and post photos of my dog around your neighbourhood letting everyone know what you did .
OMG! I wonder what constitutes acting visciously. Dogs bark. It’s what they do. Obviously he can’t have been too vicious if the Ranger was able to catch him. This is appalling. I hope the Ranger got the sack for not doing their job properly and charged with Animal cruelty!!! If I owned Buddy, I’d probably have organised a lynch mob.
Clearly more laws and regulations need to be put in place for people in occupations that deal with animals. Rangers, Police, Vets, Rescue workers etc..
This makes me so angry!!
the ranger and police shot up my sisters dog unnesasarily, after cornering him in a small area, he tried to duck low and run along the fence away from them, the cop shot him in the head, he ran several blocks away to my sisters house before they shot him the second and third time, the ranger then burned the body instead of returning it to us to bury, like we had asked, and we had been told we could do that.
the cop claimed that the dog had attacked him and bitten him on the leg, i never saw this happen and he would not show me where he was bitten, just refused, like a massive toolbag
the ranger claimed he knocked on our door several times before calling the cops, yet i was less than 5 feet from the door, enjoying a coffee at the time this apparently happened, if i hadnt looked out the window and noticed police everywhere with guns out i wouldnt have known anything was even going on
ive heard a myriad of other stories involving the ranger, to sum it all up, he hates dogs, and enjoys shooting things a little too much
What a joke,, Its a law that we have our pet Micro-chipped , its the law that we Register our pets . We spend good money on our pets because we love them thinking if they get out and get lost we will get them back. What a load of crap when you have these so called rangers who think they are above the law,and take the law into there own hands. Some peoples pets are like there children not just an animal some so called ranger can just shoot. So are they going to stop making us paying all this money. To me this is what you call a scam,, you pay the money and get nothing. This story is so sad and just so disgusting. If you hate animals that much I think you need to change your job.
Sounds like that ranger is either stupid or burnout. When you can’t go through the proper processes and just see killing as the first option it’s time to move on. A lot of council rangers are thickheads and shouldn’t be anywhere near animals.
I Lived In Leeton my whole life about 8 yrs ago I was out about in the yanco tip and there was a blue heeler that was put down and dumped there in a old heshing bag it wasn’t humane at all.. I didn’t think of telling anyone back then but now perhaps it was this ranger. If it was the owner of the dog that put it down I don’t think they would have just dumped it Anywhere. Shame on you.
It’s amazing to me to see how little regard some people have for animals in Australia. And how many times has this happened already? The previous foreign minister said that Australia is in decline, yet suggested nothing to help. If the BSL laws are wrong as well then why not fix them and at least attempt to improve our understanding of the dogs and other animals?
Thank you for your support. We are not letting this go. Our dog did not attack or bite anyone, yes she got out. We would have paid the fine, if it were that easy but our beautiful dog is dead. The ranger said she tried to attack him our dog was gentle and a sook if anything but he noosed her and she would have been scared and tried to fight back, any dog would. Yes she was micro chipped and registered, no we were not contacted by the ranger. There is an independent investigation started. We can’t get her back we miss her but we will fight for all the other animals out there because we do not want this to happen to anyone else, its too heart breaking.
Before you negative people judge. She was part of our family. we accept responsibility for her getting out, just like we would have tried to defend her and get her back, if we were given the chance and our beautiful princess was still alive we would have made sure she could not get out again. What a cruel death and the sad part for us is she spent the last hour of her life with the ranger, scared and wondering where we were and why we didn’t come for her. The ranger then took her and shot her and we could not defend our princess. She couldn’t tell him….I’m sorry I got out please take me home.