2026.09.02 – George Van Huyssteer – Will a permit ensure that dogs are treated appropriately

0:005FM 101.9 MHz of Life Cape Town pet owners could soon face changes under the city's proposed animal keeping a by-law, which is currently open for public comment until the 29th of September 26th. The draft deals with issues including dangerous dog attack, stray animals, nuisance complaint, owner responsibilities, empowerment and keeping of various animals. The debate, not just about legislation, the city recorded 3465 animal related complaints in the first 5 months of 2025 involving issues such as stray and dangerous animals barking abuse and neglect. So we are asking the question, is it about problem animals, problem dogs, problem pets, or is it problem owners? I also wonder if this isn't going too far when I was looking at this. I thought, well, what is this requirement about sterilization?

1:04Nobody is coming to check the undercarriage of my dog of Penny over 6 months. I think that's undignified and not without her full written permission will that be ever happening. Well, I don't think it will enjoy the work anyway. I don't think it will fit our road. But anyway, George, a fun, hey, steer is an animal behaviorist. A very good morning to George. Thank you for joining us. I hope you are well. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I'm a little torn around this because there's clearly a need. There's clearly a problem in some areas. But then I read some of these requirements and I think hold on a second. This is maybe a little bit of an overreach. Just take me through what's going on here. Okay. South Africa is a bit unique regarding dogs in many ways because, okay, worldwide, everything dog is unregulated. You can do whatever you want.

2:04You can read. You can try and you can give yourself out as anything. And it's just no rules regarding anything. People are breathing like crazy. They don't look for certain things like temperament anymore. Grace of dogs has allowed to breathe. And times are tough. I get it. But if you take a dog from a breeder and the female dog is stressed when she carries the puppies, the puppies might be born fearful puppies. And it's the whole thing. So I think what needs to be done is education and things like that. I know one country I've read it last week. As now, I think that people, before you adopt a dog, you must do a sort of a course, a short course. So you can make sure you can look after the animal to the basic your ability.

3:08So education is everything and regulation because it's unregulated, like I said, everybody can do anything. So I think breeders should be educated. It should be regulated. You can't just take two dogs and breed with it because you need money. That's all the thing. And then you'll start getting breeders who produces bitter or more stable puppies. You won't have all these aggressive puppies. One lady lost week in Kaepjian, for instance, asked me if it's a sting in George as well, where you now have socialization clauses and you can't let the puppies play because at that young age of between 4 and 6 weeks, they're already showing aggression towards other puppies. And that's just for breeding. That's it. It's nothing else. So people must learn about that sort of thing, what to look for in a puppy, when to breed, the health checks involved. Because like in Donbass, it's the other day in the interview. We breed for money and we don't breed for things like longevity and temperament and that's

4:13all the thing anymore. And that's a problem. That's a huge problem. Yeah, I think that is so interesting. The problem where the one of the challenges with that is sometimes a law that is necessary in a certain area lands up impacting people in other ways, almost unintended consequences. And my concern with these types of regulations is that it can reach all sorts of areas that maybe it wouldn't be intended to. Yeah, and one of the things on the table of parents and now is dog licenses of bringing dog license and spec. Now in term, you already have a problem with people, you know, they say that from an municipality and there are people in their homes. Oh, yes. And so that will allow another person to enter your home and anything can happen.

5:14So I don't think that's the solution, but I do think we have a problem. I actually know we have a problem. Yes. Well, it's clear. It's clear from the attacks, from the aggression, from the abuse of animals. And I'm looking at it obviously from a very, very privileged perspective where we love our pets and many people listening love their pets. And I can't imagine a world outside of that where there's abuse and there's breeding for all the wrong reasons, et cetera. I guess the question is, is this the best way to manage it? Do we need to do more education? As you said, training pet owners, not the pets actually around how to care for an animal. What do you think is the best? Is this the most practical way forward?

6:15My education is key to everything I do believe, actually. I do really do believe because if you educate breeders and they know what to look for when they start breeding, you'll have dogs, puppies that won't be fearful, they will be confident or it should be confident and that's all I think. And the next step is owners. Didn't you adopt that puppy at eight weeks or ten weeks or around day, allowing to be with their parents until that age? Because they learn a lot, like buying it by ten to be shined and to handle frustration. Everything they learn from their parents and siblings up to eight weeks or ten weeks. So now I take the puppy home and now there's a huge debate going on, must I socialize my puppy or must I wait for all the vaccinations to take a fix? And that's also a problem because if you allow the puppy to go through critical period of socialization between four and sixteen weeks, you stuff the puppy. You know, you ruin the puppy because socialization period is so important to build confidence

7:17and to make the puppy realize that people and other animals are no threat. So if you fail that and you have poor genetics, you'll have a dog that will be fearful for the rest of his life, probably. And then the behavioral problems come, they get scared and they bark and they bite and they attack and that's all I think. So people don't know this stuff. So if you don't know something, you won't worry about it. I'm actually buzzing now with the case where the people actually, they kind of didn't know what socialization is. And now they have a power pre-dog and the dog is now reacting with aggression towards strangers. So what do you do? Now you have a very dangerous animal. You can't allow strangers in a yard. You can't take the dog for a walk. You can't take the dog to the beach. So it affects a dog's quality of life and it increases all stress tremendously because you need to manage that situation for the rest of the dog's life, which is 10 years. So that could have been prevented if they had a solid puppy from good background, good

8:22genetics and they socialized the puppy and they kicked on socializing that the puppy, they kicked them social. In this probably wouldn't have happened. So we can prevent from happening and I think that's the key. If it starts happening, this is very difficult to solve dog problems because you need to think about things like counter-conditioning, decisization, that sort of thing. And it takes time and it's not always successful where you can actually make sure that the puppy is confident by end of 16 weeks. It's that easy. And it's actually critical, absolutely vital, George, of under here, sir. Thank you for bringing us that information. And certainly I came out of it interview a lot more knowledgeable than I went in. And this is a question. What do you think? Do you think we need to bring back dog licenses, permits, compulsory training for owners? Yeah, and are you comfortable with some stranger fiddling with the undercarriage of your pet?