21/10/2026
As the picture becomes increasingly clear in the press and among most government entities, we feel compelled to speak up, even though it may just be words in the wind and nothing will be done, as nothing ever does. Not until it will be too late, anyway.
31% to 34% of New Zealand households own at least one dog - and this percentage is silently and consistently being pushed towards extinction.
We are pushed toward a society intent on eliminating our best friends and family members, and we aren’t united enough to fight back.
People look away when injustice isn’t in their own backyard and fight alone when it is. Government structures lack transparency, accountability, and honesty, and corruption thrives. Ultimately, this is our failure—we elected those people, we keep them where they are, and we allow them to make life impossible for dogs and dog owners.
Animal welfare laws have not been updated in ages, and the press and vast majority of govt agencies show no interest in the abuse, killings, broken bones, dog fights, and neglect dogs endure—but jumps at every reaction from a dog without explaining the context. In 99% of cases, the context reveals human error.
Dog owners end up living in cars despite supposed obligations to allow pets in rentals, which no one enforces. Trying to help a dog makes you a pariah, yet the nation calls itself “civilized.”
You can be fined 100k for injuring a native chicken but people face nothing for abusing or killing a dog- unsurprising, since there’s also less liability for running over a person than for harming a penguin.
Fines and fees for owning a dog are prohibitive, the “help” is punishment rather than encouragement, and there are vast discrepancies across councils in finances, dog welfare, and euthanasia rates that in many areas exceed 90% for unclaimed dogs.
The main excuse—that there are too many dogs in pounds—goes unaddressed, with no revision of household dog limits or rewards for fostering or responsible ownership.Shifting the blame onto an undefined group of “irresponsible owners” distracts from where attention should be: on the systems capable of tackling the issue and making adjustments to accommodate the so-called “surplus,” which they choose not to implement.
We can go on and on, but we live in a society where people are too soft, to disinterested, to distracted to actually see the damage and do something about it before it is too late. The "love and light" and "kindness" veil fails, oh the horror: we actually have TO DO something to stand our ground, stand our ground against killing good dogs habitually, and silently making them unwanted in most social settings. Would most people in NZ do anything to preserve our rights to live with our dogs in the future? Probably not.
