The City of Lloydminster is looking to increase public safety through updates to its animal control bylaw.
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The bylaw was originally approved by city council in 2021, but updates are required to address current community trends and concerns.
“In an effort to increase public safety and quality of life within the community, an animal control bylaw is presented, which addresses common animal practices, issues and regulations,” explained Andrew DeGruchy, director of public safety for the City of Lloydminster.
“The animal control bylaw establishes a community standard for animal owner practices within the community.”
Highlights of the proposed updates include guidelines for the care and control of domestic animals, the establishment of a pound operation, disease control authorities, general provisions, livestock or exotic animal restrictions and restricted dog provisions.
“Along with the introduction for the designated officer to create public notices when a dog is deemed restricted,” DeGruchy said. “This would be following two unprovoked attacks or what we deem necessary to deem the dog restricted based off observation.”
Under the updated bylaw, written notice would be provided to residents living near a restricted dog’s primary address — a process DeGruchy explained would depend on the severity of the attack.
“Right now, when we do respond or investigate dog bites/attacks, we use what’s called a Dunbar Scale, which looks at the severity of the bite,” he said. “It looks at essentially the wounds and the animal behaviour.”
The Dunbar Dog Bite Scale assesses bite severity on a scale from level one to level six. Level one represents obnoxious or aggressive behaviour with no tooth-on-skin contact, while level six involves extreme danger and severe mutilation.
DeGruchy said residents will be notified based on where an incident ranks on that scale.
“We want to utilize that Dunbar scale with the proximity, so we’re still just working through — an animal that maybe scored lower on the Dunbar scale should get a more restrictive notification versus an animal that had a more severe score. We can expand it out.”
Council gave first reading to the updated animal control bylaw.
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