Dogs Trust support Royal Mail Dog Awareness Week

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DOGS Trust stepped up the training its rescue dogs receive in support of Royal Mail’s Dog Awareness Week, which ended on Friday.

The week was staged in recognition of the problems postal and other community workers face when visiting private properties and may be exposed to unfriendly dogs.

The charity is installing letterboxes in the training rooms of its rehoming centres to help its resident dogs ‘learn to love the postman’s arrival’.

Eight of the 18 centres in the UK already use letterboxes in their training rooms but the charity is keen to ensure the majority of the 16,000 dogs it cares for each year have access to similar ‘acclimatisation facilities’. Where appropriate, staff will work with dogs to address the underlying fear which is often the trigger for aggression towards visitors to a home.

The charity ran a behaviour question and answer session on Facebook last week to give owners advice on what to do if their dog does not react well to the postman’s arrival. This can be found at http://bit.ly/dogstrustqa" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Dogs Trust chief executive Clarissa Baldwin said: "We have long supported the need to keep postal and other community workers safe while they’re performing their jobs, and we are delighted to help this latest Royal Mail initiative.

"Dogs Trust has always ensured that the dogs it rehomes are as acclimatised as they can be to real-life situations, and introducing letterboxes to all of the rehoming centres with training facilities is an obvious next step in providing a ‘first class’ service.”
The charity is also keen to raise public awareness of the wider issues of responsible dog ownership. Recently it welcomed the extension of dangerous dogs legislation to include all private property. The Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Bill under consideration within the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill will introduce penalties for keepers of dogs who allow their dog to harm lawful visitors to their home.

"We see this as much-needed step in curbing irresponsible dog ownership and encouraging better control of dogs,” Mrs Baldwin said. "Owners have to be held accountable for having a dangerously out of control dog in any place – including their home. We hope the extension will result in more people taking responsibility for their dogs’ behaviour; with penalties for those who don’t. Irresponsible dog owners need to be punished rather than the dogs.

"The time is right for the Government to now look at the preventive measures that are urgently required to stop dog attacks from happening in the first place. Dogs Trust will continue to lobby the Government and engage MPs on this issue until we finally have effective, preventive dangerous dogs legislation to successfully update the draconian Dangerous Dogs Act.”


Too many attacks

Shaun Davis for the Royal Mail said: "We’re delighted to be supported by Dogs Trust and the introduction of letterboxes to all of their rehoming centres with training facilities is an excellent idea.

"We’ve held a number of one-day campaigns previously and the awareness of the issue of dog attacks is growing; last year the number fell. However there were still more than 2,400 incidents and we need to reduce this number further, as even one dog attack on our people is one dog attack too many.

"Most dogs are not inherently dangerous but even the most placid animal can be prone to attack if it feels its territory is being threatened. Our first priority as an employer is to ensure the welfare and safety of our people who provide a valuable service to our customers. We appeal to owners to keep their pets under control, especially if they know their pets have a territorial nature, and ask them to use the advice Dogs Trust has provided to try to reduce the number of attacks further.”