Tagged: dogs

On Saturday, pups, canines and pooches will swarm Auditorium Shores and Riverside Drive in the 15th annual Mighty Texas Dog Walk.

Dog owners will gather this weekend at Auditorium Shores in order to try and catch some world records, including "Most Dogs Eating the Same Treat” and “Most Dogs Wearing the Same Bandana”. There will also be dog food samples, a "dog psychic" and advice from veterinarians.

A Fort Worth couple lost their family pet in a police shooting earlier this year. Now the couple’s call for statewide police training standards when dealing with dogs has garnered nearly 90,000 signatures.

Cindy and Mark Boling have uploaded a petition to Change.org calling for standardized training, after losing their five year old border collie/English setter mix Lily this spring.

After the controversial shooting of a pet dog named Cisco earlier this year, Austin Police are announcing training and policy changes to the use of lethal force on dogs.

Austin Police Department Chief of Staff  David Carter says the department is quickly implementing policy and training changes – in hopes an incident like the Cisco shooting doesn’t happen again.

“Before an officer takes action, there needs to be an imminent threat of bodily injury,” Carter says, “whereas in the past, it would describe that the animal was dangerous.” Additionally, officers would need to “justify the position of using a firearm, versus using some other method to repel a dog, if that’s necessary. For example using a nightstick, or chemical spray, or a tazer, or some other thing such as that.”  Additional responsibility now also falls on the officer’s supervisor to investigate such shootings, instead of having the officer self-report on the circumstances of the shooting.

Austin goes to the dogs this weekend as the city attempts to break four canine-related Guinness World Records on Saturday at Auditorium Shores.

The 14th Annual Mighty Texas Dog Walk will try to break several records: the World’s Largest Dog Walk, the Biggest Hairball, the Most Dogs Wearing the Same Bandana, and the Most Dogs Sitting at Once.  The three-mile dog walk along Lady Bird Lake will include water stops for both pooches and people.  

11,256 dogs participated in the event in 2010, which was thought to be the record. According to the Guinness World Book of Records, the largest dog walk was held in Great Britain that same year.  That walk had 18,113 dogs with 178 types of breeds.  The organizers of the British event claim that record was broken yet again in 2011 with a tally of 22,742 dogs.  

The city’s eleven existing off-leash dog parks are experiencing “heavy use”, according to Austin Parks and Recreation, a headache that leads to overcrowded parking lots and soil erosion. The city believes it can improve the situation by building at least two more off-leash dog parks in more suburban areas of the city.

Specifically, the possible locations are Yett Creek Park in north Austin near Parmer Ln. and Mabel Davis District Park in southeast Austin near I-35 and Ben White Blvd.