The Town of Olds is looking at changing a couple of its bylaws, but community services director Doug Wagstaff says that's not directly due to a fatal dog attack that happened in the community last weekend.
In that Aug. 3 incident, a dog that was in a fenced yard was attacked and killed by at least three of four dogs that escaped from a dog breeding operation several blocks away.
During an interview with the Albertan, Wagstaff said long before that tragedy, council had asked administrative staff to do an overall review of the Community Standards Bylaw, which includes a section on keeping animals in the community.
"So some research on that was already in the works to prepare for this fall," he said.
At the same time, Wagstaff said, town officials have been looking into the fact that two town bylaws — the Community Standards Bylaw and the Land Use Bylaw — "are silent on dog breeding operations."
"They don't speak to it either way, so we had already recognized (that) and were doing some research in — for the same time frame — to prepare for how do we address dog breeding businesses in the Town of Olds," he said.
"We were already looking at our bylaws, as we do continually. Bylaws are not just a static thing, they're always up for — you know, do we have the right balance and are there gaps? We're always reviewing our bylaws that way."
Wagstaff confirmed this is not the first time dogs have escaped from that business, Alberta XL Bullies.
He said in April, two of the four dogs involved in the Aug. 3 attack were found at large in a park in town with no dog licences.
He said they were impounded, but because the owner paid fines for the bylaw violations and because the animals were not found by a vet or the community peace officer to be exhibiting aggressive behaviour, no further action was taken.
On Aug. 6, a petition to the town to shut down Alberta XL Bullies was launched on Change.org.
Wagstaff was asked if such a petition can indeed force the town to shut down the business.
"I'm going to speak generally, not specifically to this incident. Generally, if there are bylaws that someone has infringed, then the town would have its ability to withdraw a business licence, withdraw a dog licence. That's under the bylaws currently," Wagstaff said.
"If there was evidence in an investigation that would support that action, the town would take those types of actions, but unless it's something that's within our legislative framework, we're not able to arbitrarily make those types of decisions unless they've violated some bylaws."
Wagstaff said it's too soon to know when an investigation launched by town officials into the Aug. 3 fatal dog attack will be completed.
"We are putting all of our efforts into it. It's a serious violation of our Community Standards Bylaw. So it's one we've been putting the resources into to deal with as expeditiously as we can," he said.
