Luis Feliu
A savage attack by a bull terrier on a smaller dog outside a Byron Bay backpackers hostel last month has cost the owner of the aggressive dog $8,000 and his pet has been ordered to be destroyed.
Dane Bouris, of Watsons Bay, Sydney, pleaded guilty to several charges over the attack and fined a total $7,500 and ordered to pay $586 compensation in Byron Bay Court on Friday.
The court was told Mr Bouris’s Staffordshire bull terrier had previously been declared a dangerous dog by Woollahra Municipal Council after a previous attack.
Magistrate Michael Dakin said Mr Bouris had showed ‘grave irresponsibility’ when he took his pet dog unleashed to the Aquarius Backpackers Hostel and drank alcohol at the bar and became intoxicated on the afternoon of June 8.
The court was told the smaller dog was leashed outside the hostel and waiting with a friend of the owner when Bouris and his dog came out of the bar area.
When the bull terrier caught sight of the smaller dog, he broke into a full sprint and locked his jaws around the smaller dog and thrashed around with it.
The smaller dog was yelping and bleeding as a result and Bouris and another man then prized the two dogs apart.
Police and a ranger were called to the scene and the small dog was taken to the vet where he underwent surgery.
The ranger spoke to Bouris at a property the following day where Bouris told him the attack had only been ‘a dog scrap’.
Mr Dakin said Bouris had showed no remorse over the attack and taking the dog unleashed into the Byron Bay CBD was ‘very serious’.
He said that Bouris taking his dog into a food preparation area at the backpacker hostel was ‘self indulgent’.
Mr Dakin fined Bouris $5,000 and ordered the compensation for the attack, $1,500 for failing to comply with a dangerous dog declaration order and $1,000 for taking the dog unleashed into a public place.
He also made out an order for the destruction of the dog to be sent to Woollahra Council and awarded professional costs of around $1,000 against Bouris.
This is the kind of mentality that makes me despair. Byron Shire Council, you need to have your rangers out there claming down on unleashed dogs – not just in Byron but in our parks and on our beaches. Morons like Bouris abound, and next time, God forbid, the target of the dog attack could be a child.
To every fool who thinks the laws (dogs must be leashed in public, “no dogs allowed” in many parks and on most beaches) don’t apply to them or their dogs – you’re wrong, you’re showing the utmost disrespect and disregard for every other member of your community and obviously you think your dog is more important than the children of this community. You are breaking the law and you deserve to be hit with a fine. If you’re too lazy to restrain and properly exercise your dog in a designated dog exercise area I suggest you pass the animal along to someone who can care for it properly.
Do I have a dog? Not any more. People are starving in this world, I’d rather allocate money to them.
Idiot. Your the type of bloke that makes it hard for the rest of us staffy, bully, and pitty owners to get a fair go. Your only interested in how tough the dog can make YOU look. If you’d spent your time training it as oppose to getting pissed, your dog would be alive, another dog wouldn’t be half dead, and you’d be $8000 better off.
How tough do you feel now?
This is such a sad little tale. What teeth has the dangerous dog act got?
Aren’t staffie-bull terriers outlawed in NSW since 2009? Why didn’t Woollahra council refer it for state prosecution of the owner, and destruction of the animal, at the time of the first attack? It would seem that’s the intent of the legislation.
Maybe he was served a notice and thought, bugger it I’ll give the dog a holiday in Byron first.
Could be a nice human interest piece about the value of animal companions? Second thoughts, it may be more of a Byron Living piece.
Hope the (usually aggressive) “smaller dog” is recovering.
Dane Bouris was a Cleo Bachelor of the year contestant and his bio states that what get’s him fired up is animal cruelty. How ironic.