Council criticised for stray dog policy
A man who runs kennels has criticised a Staffordshire council for failing in its duty to take in stray dogs and says it has opting to farm them out to another council instead of taking responsibility itself.
A man who runs kennels has criticised a Staffordshire council for failing in its duty to take in stray dogs and says it has opting to farm them out to another council instead of taking responsibility itself.
Ben Wilkes, of the Border Collie Trust, in Colton, near Rugeley, says t hat claims at 10.15pm on Thursday night a four-year-old male, brindle-coloured Staffordshire terrier was brought to their kennels by a man who found it near to the cemetery on Cannock Chase earlier in the evening.
The man said that he was told by Cannock Council that if he could not take it home overnight and keep it until the dog warden service resumed in the morning then he could take it to Lichfield District Council.
Mr Wilkes said: "We've had an incident which sums up the whole sorry situation.
"What sort of approach is that? If I lost my dog on Cannock Chase, I would not even think about ringing Lichfield District Council to see if it were brought in.
"And if someone then said they found it on Beacon Street the owner would never get it back."
The kennels took the dog in for the night.
They say they rang the dog warden service the next morning to be told he was a mile and a half the wrong side of Cannock Chase district boundary and would have to get Lichfield District Council's wardens to pick it up.
Mr Wilkes said that the trust approached the council to offer the kennels as an out-of-hours drop-off service but after three weeks had not had a reply.
David Prosser-Davies, Cannock Chase Council's food and safety manager, said the terrier should have been picked up. He said: "This issue is being taken up with the council's contractor. A number of bids for the contract to run the council's stray dog service from April 2009 are being evaluated."
