THE FARM MANAGER, EDGECUMBE BLOCK. Bob, While we appreciate the way you have got control of the dog problem over there we can not condone some of the methods of which we have been informed you are using. Yours Eric Gibson. SUPERINTENDENT L&S ROTORUA. Another twist to this is that particularly in Edgecumbe’s case the township of Kawerau was actually built on it and as in most urban areas dogs are not in short supply. All the blocks that were close to towns or bush blocks were subjected to a fair amount of dog worrying. I think over the years as the population of Kawerau increased the problem became worse, especially as the manager saw it being more a Council problem and looked to the Dog Ranger to get it under control. While appearing to be coping as best he could with the problem in fact from what I could gather did buggeral about it, except to pick up the dead sheep and send a exaggerated body count to Rotorua. The extra non-excising deaths from the dogs went some way to concealing the Blocks poor performance, and subsequently his management was not queried. ( I was proactive in this matter and shot 87 dogs in the act of worrying and cut the overall death rate from all causes from almost 10% to under 2 %, within 3 years) While I was on the ball with eliminating roaming dogs by adopting the US MILITARY’S idea of PRE EMPTIVE STRIKES against any loose dog I saw, I will admit and know, lowering the death rate had more to do with management than dog control. Here is a bit copied from the Superintendents’ letter regarding worrying dogs from this book BOB BOOK 03.
ABS