A bichon frise/shih tzu cross owned by a Port Coquitlam couple will retain an "aggressive dog" designation for at least another two months after city council this week couldn't decide if the label should stick.
On Monday, after an appeal by the dog owner to remove the designation imposed by city staff last year, council voted to hold off on its decision after it was deadlocked on how to handle the animal while it's in public. For more than 90 minutes, city council debated, voting three times before it agreed to wait until it had a full council present at the table.
As a result of the delay, council will have to run through the entire process — with the dog owners and city staff making their pleas again.
As well, because the hearing is still considered "live" until Coun. Brad West returns from a business trip, council and city staff are banned from receiving new information from the community on the matter.
During Monday's hearing, Angela Ma disputed her dog, Cola, had pursued and bitten a child and challenged the city's bylaw services manager on how he and other city staff dealt with the subsequent investigation.
Ma contended the city failed to provide sufficient evidence that resulted in Cola being designated aggressive. She also claimed there was no proof her dog bit the child and photos submitted to the city by the child's father, in the hours after the attack, looked more like spider bite marks.
At issue in the appeal is whether Cola was provoked when it bit the boy on a city sidewalk near Terry Fox secondary last July. Under the city's animal control bylaw, an aggressive dog is defined, in general, as an animal that can attack a person without provocation and cause harm.
Bylaw services manager Dan Scoones told council the dog was being walked — along with another dog — by a teenage neighbour of Ma's when it escaped its collar, pushed down the boy and bit him while he was with a group of other children and workers from a daycare.
Following an investigation — in which Ma said the city failed to visit with Cola — the Ma family was issued two city notices to have the dog restrained in public with a leash and muzzle as it was now deemed "aggressive."
On Monday, Mayor Greg Moore said he had challenges with the definition and there was a potential Cola could have felt provoked with so many children around it at the time of its walk last July.
Moore suggested council find middle ground by removing the designation from Cola and having it placed in a harness — not a muzzle — while outside its home.
Coun. Mike Forrest also pointed out that had the Mas not tampered with Cola's metal choke collar by placing a zap strap around it so it wouldn't get too tight, the animal wouldn't have escaped and bit the child.
"It's the owners of the dog that are the problem — not necessarily the dog," Forrest said.
But councillors Darrell Penner and Glenn Pollock said pedestrians of all ages need to be protected.
"Using a four- or five-year-old child walking down the street and acting like a four- or five-year-old child as provocating the dog is crazy," Penner said. "Children should be able to walk down the street and act like four- or five- or six-year-old children and if a dog got loose… And the child sustained some injuries, we have to make sure that dog doesn't do that again."
Since July 2008, PoCo's bylaw division has issued 80 aggressive dog notices. Forty-six of those animals still live in PoCo; the others have either relocated or have died.
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