Dog owners issued warning as £1000 fine looms in bid to crackdown on crime

As people prepare to flock to the countryside this summer, to protect livestock, North Yorkshire Police is urging all dog owners to keep their pet leashed wherever livestock may be nearby.

Police Sergeant David Lund from the force’s Rural Task Force told GB News: “If you’re out walking your dog, especially in the countryside, please put your dog on a lead. It is that simple.

“Make sure you’ve got full control over the dog. It has to be on a lead, it has to be secure.

“If a dog gets into a field and starts worrying livestock and you cannot call that dog back or you’re not present, the farmer can and will shoot the dog to protect their livestock.”

Livestock worrying is a crime with a £1,000 maximum fine in England and it’s an offence that hits farmers not just financially, but also emotionally.

North Yorkshire sheep farmer, Rebecca Wilson, told GB News: “The financial burden of livestock worrying came to nearly £2 million in 2020 – this is something we simply can’t afford.

“But actually the impact on the farmer is huge. Farmers are already stressed and have big financial constraints, big input costs and to have an extra burden on them causes sleepless nights, worry and actually tops up all the other challenges they’re facing already.”

It is devastating for farmers to discover their sheep dead or attacked, and as livestock worrying is rarely reported by dog owners, the farmer often has no legal recourse.

“I went to one farmer who had about 20 lambs and they’d been worried across the field and gone into one fence and bounced off the other fence and a lot of them had been strangulated and a lot had passed from pure exhaustion,” said Sarah Harridge, Police Community Support Officer, North Yorkshire Police Rural Task Force.

“Because there was no sign of a dog attack, it was even more frustrating because they’d literally been run until they were tired and they just died on the floor, so it was like a horror film when we saw them as they were all just laid out.”

The UK sheep sector is at risk of being permanently forced to live with the devastating consequences of dog attacks, according to the National Sheep Association.

Their 2023 survey of 305 sheep farmers showed 70% had experienced a sheep worrying attack in the past 12 months, with 95 per cent of respondents experiencing up to 10 cases per year.

Eighty-two per cent of survey respondents also strongly agreed that additional powers are necessary to act as a deterrent to dog owners allowing attacks to happen.

The National Sheep Association believe that the increase in dog attacks on livestock is in part due to the rise in dog ownership during the pandemic.

Phil Stocker, Chief Executive of National Sheep Association, told GB News: “A lot of farmers now are just becoming resigned to it [livestock worrying] and it is becoming the norm and they’re having to accept it.

“It’s even leading to fewer reports being made to the police because they’re not sure they can do anything about it.

“The Kept Animals Bill is proposing to raise police powers to go in and seize dogs and to take DNA samples and things like that, and that’s very welcome.”