The behaviour of dogs is one of the major causes of complaints to Council. Unfortunately Council impounds and euthanases several hundred dogs every year.

Your dogs must be registered with Council. There are substantial discounts on registration fees for desexed dogs and for pensioner owners.

If your dog offends against one of the Region's local laws you may be given a warning, fined, your animal seized, or in serious cases you may be prosecuted as well. Offending dogs may be seized or excluded from the Regional Area.

Council has a number of off-leash areas for dogs throughout the Region - for more information please click here

Stray Dogs

If a dog has wandered onto your premises you may privately impound the dog and take it to nearest Council Pound.

If you have no way of getting the dog to the Pound, Council can arrange to pick the animal up.  The dog must be contained or leashed and you must be present at the time of collection. and you must sign a private impounding declaration.

If a dog is wandering in your area call Council Customer Service Centre on 1300 22 55 77 with a full description of the dog and Council’s Community Compliance Officers will patrol the area.

Barking Dogs

In all cases Council encourages residents to first approach their neighbour and attempt to resolve the situation. In some instances the animal owner may not be aware of the nuisance their dog is causing.

Complainants are required to put their complaint in writing providing a noise log of the dates and times the nuisance occurs. If necessary, complainants will be required to attend Court when the matter is pursued.

A standard complaint form can be accessed by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page. A Barking Dog Peace Pack is also available which can be posted to the owner of the animal and yourself.  This pack contains information for both the animal owner and the complainant on causes for barking nuisances.  The complaint form and the peace pack can be obtained from Councils Customer Service Centres.

Complainant’s details are kept confidential unless the matter does go to Court.
The owner of the dog in question may be counselled and/or fined and/or issued with a notice requiring them to take action to abate the nuisance and complainants are advised of the outcome of the investigation.

Should the problem still be ongoing officers will continue to pursue the matter.

Agressive Dogs

In all cases complainants are required to put their complaint in writing and undertake that, if necessary, they are prepared to attend Court when the matter is pursued.

A standard complaint form is available from Councils Customer Service Centre and can be mailed out to you.

However complainant’s details are kept confidential unless the matter does go to Court.
Depending upon the severity of the attack, the keeper of the dog may be fined or prosecuted.

Further the dog may be declared either a dangerous dog or a menacing dog under the Animal Management (Cats and Dogs) Act 2008, which will also incur additional annual registration fees and compliance with legislated keeping conditions.

Please click on the link below for some tips on how to deal with some common problems with dogs.