DogSmart education

We believe education is the key to ensuring community safety, while allowing people to enjoy the benefits of owning a dog.

Our Animal Control team offers free presentations in which we outline what we do and why. How to care for and control dogs, as well as bite prevention and safety. This includes the DogSmart programme (see below).

We can customise these presentations to suit what you or your organisation needs - and how much time you have available.

Get in touch and have a chat to find out how we can bring our expertise into your place! Talk to our animal control staff on 0800 492 452 or email us.

We provide these presentations to:

• Pre-schools.
• Kindergartens and playcentres.
• Primary school groups.
• Community workers.
• Dog training classes.
• We also do adult education.

DogSmart

When we visit your school we'll use our 45-minute interactive DogSmart presentation to help children learn:

• how to avoid being bitten by dogs
• the correct way to approach a dog they don't know
• the basic responsibilities of a dog owner 

Some of your students may have had little or no contact with a dog. However, others may already have had an unpleasant experience with one. We bring a real dog with us for the DogSmart presentation: it's been trained to safely interact with children. However, if any of your students are afraid of dogs, we also have alternative ways within the presentation to help those children to learn how to approach a dog.

These sessions are fun and interactive. There is no cost for our visit and each session can be tailored to suit different age groups - we can be flexible with times, dates and length. We have many resources and can discuss which ones are the most appropriate.

The DogSmart programme has been endorsed by the New Zealand Institute of Animal Control Officers (NZIACO).