On the road with animal control

Auckland's animal control staff are busier than ever, impounding more than 10,000 dogs over the past year.

The vast majority are never picked up by their owners, abandoned at a shelter to be rehomed or, failing that, euthanised.

Senior animal management officer Rebecca had been working in South Auckland for eight years, and said dog attacks had skyrocketed in that time.

"In years past, each officer would get a dog attack maybe once a week. Now you're getting a dog attack every day or every other day," she said.

RNZ joined Rebecca on patrol in Papakura as she tackled her lengthy to-do list.

Passing through Takanini between jobs, she noted that a loose dog had been reported in the area.

"There's no capacity, staffing-wise, to be able to respond to every roaming complaint immediately, so we have to categorise what's important and what's not. This one was deemed not urgent," Rebecca explained.

"Oh look, there he is! Yeah, he's just going to do the runner straight away."

The black Jack Russell terrier recognised the patrol car and bolted.

"So often dogs, they just know. Don't ask me how, but they just know 'Animal Management's after me', and so they kick it into fifth gear," she said.

"This dog, his body language is telling me he knows where he's going. He doesn't look lost, he doesn't look confused. He's running back home."

As she moved to confront the dog on its home turf, Rebecca warned its behaviour could turn violent.

The dog charged at her and snarled, but Rebecca stood her ground. She whipped out her retractable baton and stomped her foot, sending the dog running in the opposite direction.

It escaped, but Rebecca noted the address for a follow-up visit.

The baton, a 'bite stick', is not designed for hitting the dogs, she explained.

"So I snapped it out and it made a big noise, and at the same time I stomped my foot and walked towards the dog, just one step, while I'm deploying it, and that noise alone usually gets the dog to back off," she said.

Most dogs would not resort to violence outside their own territory, but Rebecca explained that territory would grow the more a dog roamed.

"The ones that roam a lot, their territory grows. It goes from being, 'this is my house, this is my territory', to 'actually the footpath in front of my house, that's my territory too'," she said.

"The more they roam, the more confident they get."

A controversial profession

With reports of roaming dogs flooding Animal Management on a daily basis, Rebecca was busier than ever before.

But not everyone appreciated her work.

"A lot of the time, the yelling and the abuse, we always say to ourselves, they're not yelling at us, they're yelling at the uniform," she said.

"But that can still be quite a heavy load to carry at the end of the day when you take your uniform off."

Animal Management had a strict policy disallowing media from reporting their staff's full names, to prevent that harassment following them home - an understandable step for an agency mandated to confiscate and, in many cases, kill pets.

Much of Rebecca's job was to offer second chances. "I don't want to have to take your dog away" was a line she repeated during every visit.

Even still, 10,214 dogs had been impounded during the 2025 fiscal year, the result of a population boom caused by a decline in desexing.

That was dramatic increase from the 8306 dogs confiscated the year before, itself an increase on the year before that.

Many would be taken to the Manukau Animal Shelter, the city's busiest.

"Don't approach the kennels, because some of these dogs are not very nice," shelter manager Tommy warned while touring the facility.

His staff would assess confiscated dogs to check they could be safely rehomed.

Some, like puppy Maude, were lucky.

"[Maude] just got adopted today, the decision was made today. So she's going to be picked up later this week by her new family, so this is really exciting for her," he said.

Tommy felt a sense of relief whenever a dog was cleared for adoption, because the alternative was a death sentence.

"A lot of dogs [have] no known owner, no one comes forward, the dog has some serious behavioral issues that don't really make them adoptable, and in those situations, the only outcome really is to put the dog down."

Animal Management boss Elly Waitoa said just one third of impounded dogs would be retrieved by their owners.

The rest were left in the hands of Auckland Council, and a lack of space meant those hands were tied.

"We've got limited capacity and resource to hold dogs long term, and there's nowhere for them to go," she said.

The Manukau shelter had capacity for 120 dogs, and construction was underway to increase that number to 150.

It would not be enough, that was a harsh reality that Animal Management staff struggled to accept.

"You wouldn't work in the shelter day after day, cleaning up dog faeces, caring for often very aggressive dogs ... You wouldn't be capable of doing it if you didn't love them," Waitoa said.

"They're the ones who are caring for 10,000 other people's dogs every year and then at the end if they're not claimed, a large portion of them have to be euthanized and that's just probably the most challenging part of their role."

Rebecca said too many of the dog owners she encountered viewed their pets as disposable.

"A lot of people have this throw away attitude that the dogs can just be disposed of and they can get another one for free on Facebook," she said.

"The dog has done nothing wrong, it's you as an owner that has failed that dog."

Rebecca felt that in an ideal world, she would not have a job.

But with so many animals loose on the street, somebody had to keep their owners on a tight leash.

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