Resh­ma Ra­goonath

South Ca­nine Club pres­i­dent Clif­ford Man­choon says the Dan­ger­ous Dog leg­is­la­tion has done a lot more dam­age to pet own­ers and lovers than an­tic­i­pat­ed.The leg­is­la­tion, he said, has placed a fi­nan­cial bur­den on pet own­ers and it is not sur­pris­ing to find dogs list­ed un­der the act aban­doned.

Man­choon, who spoke with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day at the Pet Lovers Club of T&T and Pu­ri­na Who let the Dogs out Pets and Fam­i­ly Day at Palmiste Park, San Fer­nan­do, no prop­er reg­u­la­to­ry body is in place and many pet own­ers are left won­der­ing what to do.He said one of the main ob­jec­tives of Pet Lovers Club is ed­u­cat­ing pet own­ers about what they are re­quired to do un­der the leg­is­la­tion.

"We would be go­ing out to dif­fer­ent schools and or­gan­i­sa­tions to give peo­ple good in­for­ma­tion about car­ing for their pets. The Dan­ger­ous Dog Act has done a lot more dam­age to pet lovers and to peo­ple who own pets be­cause of the cost of putting in­sur­ance in place. Pet lovers in­tend to ed­u­cate oth­ers on how they could fence their place to meet the re­quire­ments in an eco­nom­i­cal way, cost ef­fec­tive­ly," he said.

Marc Mout­tet, di­rec­tor of Vem­co, the com­pa­ny re­spon­si­ble for dis­trib­ut­ing Pu­ri­na Pet Care prod­ucts in Trinidad and spon­sor of yes­ter­day's event, shared Man­choon's con­cerns. He said the bill was brought out with a "cer­tain amount of haste."

"There is a lot of am­bi­gu­i­ty and con­fu­sion. Peo­ple are not sure what to do, where to go and do it. We are try­ing to bridge the gap and al­le­vi­ate some of that am­bi­gu­i­ty and di­rect peo­ple in the right di­rec­tion," he said. Mout­tet said the com­pa­ny was pleased with the turnout at the event which dog own­ers from around the coun­try glad­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in and showed off their dog pets.

Dogs of every size were pa­rad­ed around the park by their own­ers. Large breed dogs such as Alaskan Husky, Amer­i­can Bul­ly, Mas­tiffs and Ger­man Shep­herds at­tract­ed a lot of at­ten­tion, as well as the small­er dogs like Poo­dles and Chi­huahuas.

"In light of the Dan­ger­ous Dog bill we en­cour­age every­one to get com­pli­ant. One of the big ini­tia­tives to­day (yes­ter­day) is the mi­crochip, which is re­al­ly to help give the dog an iden­ti­ty. We en­cour­age that and we fa­cil­i­tat­ed that here to­day with pur­chase of a Pu­ri­na prod­uct (there was) free mi­crochip­ing (of dogs)," Mout­tet said. He said there are parts of the leg­is­la­tion that have to be passed but are yet to be passed.

He said he agrees that there should be some reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion and some leg­is­la­tion for dogs Pu­ri­na is try­ing to make it easy for fam­i­lies and dog own­ers to get on board with the leg­is­la­tion.Dog train­er and dog breed­er Nail Ur­bano, of Mar­aval, ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that the Amer­i­can Bul­ly was named as a dan­ger­ous dog un­der the leg­is­la­tion since it is not an ag­gres­sive breed.

His dog, Eight Ball, an Amer­i­can Bul­ly drew some in­tim­i­dat­ed looks from pa­trons at the event. Among the par­tic­i­pants at yes­ter­day's event was the An­i­mal Wel­fare Net­work, T&T So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA) and An­i­mals Alive.The event al­so in­clud­ed and an adop­tion dri­ve to ed­u­cate own­ers about an­i­mal wel­fare. Dogs were al­so treat­ed to free groom­ing as well as free vet­eri­nar­i­an check-ups.