Waching daily Mar 19 2018

Hi there, I'm here with Mark Bignell one of the Tweed Shire Council Rangers, now

I've also got my dog Ben, and we're going to have a quick chat to you about off-leash dog areas.

There's been a number of incidents and

Ben was attacked a little while ago and ended up with an injury from a dog.

There's a number of other reasons you need your dog on a leash so Mark

can you tell us where in Tweed you need to have your dog on a leash?

Simply, when you take your dog off your private property, they must be on a leash at all times.

It's as simple as that unless you're in a designated off-leash area, to which Council have fourteen designated areas throughout the Council.

We have four on the beaches and we have ten throughout the shire in parks and reserves.

What happens if you don't have your dog on a leash and you come along and fine someone?

Well potentially you could be fined on the spot

Two hundred and twenty dollars and worse scenario, we can have a dog attack

And that's right. I mean Ben was attacked, but obviously people can get attacked. You were telling me, how many attacks a week?

On average at Tweed Shire Council, we have two attacks come in

every week. That's two attacks too many now there is another important reason we're surrounded by this beautiful environment

with the dangers to wildlife.

Yeah, we have wildlife birds that nest here. We also have turtles that come here to lay their eggs.

And then we also have wallabies and kangaroos that come in so all of the Australian wildlife.

So, please

keep your dog on a leash

when you're not in a designated off-leash dog area and do the right thing and look after

yourselves, your animals and the people around you and the environment. Thank you.