New strategy targets dog-on-dog attacks in Edmonton

After a recent uptick in dog-on-dog attacks in Edmonton, the city is looking to create a strategy to reduce the number of attacks and to better communicate with owners.

The city has assigned several peace officers to deal with dog attacks and educatingowners on how to reduce their dogs' aggressiveness towardother animals.

Keith Scott, co-ordinator with the community standards peace officer section, said the plan addresses the problem both reactively and proactively.

"We can certainly react to dog attacks, but preventing them is the hard part," Scott told CBC's Radio Active. "We felt like we needed to start doing something a bit better to try and see if we can make a difference."

There have been at least 81 fatal dog-on-dog attacks in Edmonton over the past six years, with ebbs and flows between the years.

"It seems to be quite cyclical one year, we get a number of fatalities, and then the next year we don't get very many," Scott said.

Scott said he hoped the plan to reduce dog attacks would have already been in place, but said they need more time to ensure it's handled correctly. He hopes the plan will be in place by July.

The assigned peace officers dealing with dog attacks will help improve communication and consistency, Scott said.

As for the education, that might be more difficult to implement.

"It certainly isn't easy with prevention," Scott said. "Dogs are so unpredictable and it's about trying to educate the dog owners to say, 'You need to be more responsible.' "

Scott said he doesn't believe certain breeds are more likely to attack, but said the commonality is more in the attacks generally involve a bigger dog attacking a smaller one.

"We're really trying to get to the root cause," he said. "It's any breed that can be involved in an attack, it just seems the majority is large dogs on small dogs."

The new strategy will likely not involve breed restriction, Scott said, and owners of offending dogs could face stiffer fines in the future.