Last April a woman in the Ballinamallard area suffered a horrific injury after she intervened when her dog were being attacked by another dog. The woman lost her finger in the attack, and the offending dog was subsequently put down. Following the attack, it was left to the Council’s dog control officers to carry out the investigation on their own, with no police assistance. 

Cllr John McClaughry raised the issue of the attack during a presentation on dog control issues at the March meeting of the Council’s  environmental services committee.

“[It] was one of the most serious incidents I’ve seen and you’ve seen with a dog, and obviously the outcome of that,” said Cllr McClaughry, referring to the grave injury suffered by the dog owner. 

“This incident will stay with that woman for the rest of her life,” he said.

Cllr McClaughry said he was shocked that the Council dog wardens had been left to themselves to investigate what had happened, and called on the Council to write to both the Department of Justice and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to review current animal enforcement legislation. 

“I felt the legislation is not fit for purpose and I felt it was unfair given the workload your staff have that they had to investigate an incident at the top end,” he said. 

“If that had been a serious assault on one human by another resulting in that type of injury you would have had a massive police input investigating it.”

Cllr Diana Armstrong, who aware of the attack which she called “very disturbing”, seconded Cllr McClaughry’s motion to write to the departments. 

Meanwhile, it was revealed at the same meeting that there had been a total of eight dog attacks on people in the Fermanagh and Omagh area since the end of January. It is understood the majority of these were on postmen.