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news
Deer in Bushy Park (copyright Simon MacMichael).JPGOwner fined after dog sparks deer stampede in which 10-year-old cycling with family was injured
A man whose dog caused a herd of deer to stampede in one of London’s Royal Parks, resulting in a boy aged 10 who was cycling with his family to sustain a broken rib and head injuries, has been fined £800.
Software firm director Finn Schioldan, aged 52 and from Weybridge, pleaded guilty at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court yesterday to causing or permitting an animal to chase another animal in a Royal Park, reports The Mirror.
The incident happened at 2.50pm on 17 January in Bushy Park, which is adjacent to Hampton Court Palace in south west London.
Schioldan had gone to the park for a walk with his son and their Rhodesian Ridgeback dog, which managed to slip its lead and chased after some of the deer, which roam free in the park.
Emek Yagmur, prosecuting, told the court: “On January 17 this defendant brought his brown Rhodesian Ridgeback to the deer park.
“These dogs are hunting dogs. On that day the park was crowded with very high visitor numbers.
“This defendant was accompanied with his son and his dog and they were walking in area between Heron Pond and Diana Car Park.
“That dog at one point was on a lead but then, at around 2.40pm, that dog began chasing a number of deer into the pond and out the gate.
“As the deer were running a family group on bicycles, which was a father and three children, one of the deer was rushing and attempted to jump over the family on the bicycles and that collided with the youngest boy causing a head injury and a fractured rib.
“Officers then attended Bushy Park, this defendant was then spoken to and he was charged.”
The child was treated for his injuries at King’s College Hospital.
The dog owner, representing himself, said: “It wasn't the intention to let the dog off the lead but it was off the lead.
“I was not aware that the kid was injured. Police were telling me that the boy had come off his bike and had hurt his rib but I was not aware of a head injury.
“He was taken to the hospital the same day. It wasn't clear what injury he had.”
Magistrate Richard Jefferson, who also ordered Schioldan to pay costs of £85 and an £80 victim surcharge, said: “Please be very careful, these deer are not little Bambies. They are tough, they live outside, they are tough.”
Herds of red deer and fallow deer are found in three of London’s Royal Parks, with the largest found in Richmond Park, less than two miles northeast of Bushy Park.
Greenwich Park is home to the smallest population and, unlike the other two parks, the deer there are kept in a fenced enclosure with no public access.
On its website, The Royal Parks tells dog owners to keep their animals on a lead when deer are nearby, and park visitors are advised in all cases to maintain at least 50 metres’ distance from them.
Last month, police released footage shot by a cyclist of several bike riders in Richmond Park trying to stop an attack by a dog on a deer, which also sustained a broken leg when a driver hit it as it was being chased and subsequently had to be put down. The dog’s owner was fined £602.
> Cyclists try to stop dog attacking injured deer in Richmond Park
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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37 comments
Owners of dogs like these have a high probability of being nutters, so asking for responsible behaviour is unlikely to be fruitful. I agree with the condemnation of extendible leads- a great hazard next to roads.
Do you have some statistics to back up that distasteful sweeping statement?
No official statistics would be available because of the lack of an official definition of 'nutter', so your request is meaningless. We have to go on experience that the owners of large aggressive dogs are likely to be nutters with tattoos.
FFS just take the statement with a pinch of salt. She's not on trial.
"It wasn't the intention to let the dog off the lead but it was off the lead"
LOL! I haven't a clue what those words were supposed to mean, but I will take a guess she was just throwing paper aeroplanes at Bin Laden.
* [Citation required]
>> Owners of dogs like these have a high probability of being nutters
well of course dog owners are nutters - why else would they choose to own a pet that requires picking its warm poop up with their own hands ?
The ones that really confuse me are the ones who do the picking up and only then leaving the bag.
Weasel words from the owner. The only reason to choose the form of words he did is if he knows he can't contest the fact of his dog being off the lead, but wishes to disclaim responsibility for it without specifying how it came to be.
In other words, a way to deny permitting the dog to be off the lead without presenting a provable falsehood to the court.
"I was not aware that the kid was injured".
Some real remorse and compassion right there. I'd have fined him for being a cunt.
Is Bushy Park local, if you live in Weybridge? Or did he drive there to 'walk' his dog as necessary exercise?
It's a fair distance from Weybridge to just past Hampton Court. And there are parks in Weybridge that would serve the purpose.
Just imagine the headlines if the deer had been scared by a cyclist and hit a kid...
FENTON!!!!!
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Dog "managed to slip its lead"
Yeah, right...
Is it possible for any offender not to indulge in lies when faced with prosecution? You've been caught, just own up, take the deserved punishment and make sure you don't allow anything like that to happen again. It's pretty simple, the punishment will probably be no different and you avoid looking like an arsehole that couldn't care less about anybody but themselves.
My very thought when I read that line. I'd like to see the report quoting the magistrate along the lines of "the court rejects your preposterous claim that the dog slipped its lead. I am adding £1000 to the fine for lying to the court."
That's not how I've read this at all. It seems to me that it's road.cc who are using the phrase "slipped its lead". I can't see where the owner says this, only where he acknowledges that the dog was not on the lead
The article quotes the owner stating “It wasn't the intention to let the dog off the lead but it was off the lead."
That has been summarised as "slipped its lead" for the leader.
Of course it's possible that it happened some other way, but it's hard to see what that would be. If it jerked the lead out of his hand (a) it wouldn't be "off the lead", and (b) his turn of phrase would be a very strange way of putting it.
If it snapped the lead, likewise, why wouldn't you just state that?
The only remaining alternatives interpretations that I can think of would be that it slipped the lead; he got distracted by something and let go of the lead unintentionally; or someone else physically intervened and took the lead out of his hand.
In the absence of further elaboration, which one is the only credibe interpretation? Or do you think there's another possibility?
To be fair to road.cc, they've just reworded the Mirror's 'got off the lead' to 'slipped the lead' (presumably in the hopes that it will disguise the fact that they've just copied and pasted the story), so it's really the Mirror you should be taking issue with.
A Rideback is a big, powerful dog. It's quite possible that if it pulled hard, it'd jerk the lead from the owner's hand. My sister was walking her lurcher and her daughter's greyhound in the woods some time back when a deer burst out of the trees, with an alsation in hot pursuit. The two dogs pulled my sister flat on her face, though she managed to keep hold of them. My own whippet has caught me off balance a few times when he's seen a cat or a squirrel or a fox as he's strong and fast, but not as powerful as a ridgeback.
You weren't there. You don't know.
Well you should know.....
No I don't know and the comments from the court are pretty vague, so nobody on this thread really knows what did or didn't happen. But the guy has been fined.
Woooosssssshhhhhhh ...
There's only oneway to resolve this .........fight !
If the lead had snapped, or if he had pulled out of the owners control, I'm sure the defense would have mentioned in court. His exact wording in his defence was "“It wasn't the intention to let the dog off the lead but it was off the lead." which to me sounds like he wasn't on it at that time when it saw the deer.
How fast did the Police get there being as he never checked how the child was doing before hand?
Exactly. If you believe he hadn't deliberately let the dog off the lead based on mealy-mouthed wording, I have a bridge to sell you. If the lead had snapped or just been pulled out of his hands, he'd have said so, but he didn't, because that would have been total bullshit.
Exactly. I own a large male Labrador dog, the bastard must weigh about 40 kilos. I am 183cm and 90kilos and I struggle to keep a hold of him when he has it in his head to go somewhere. He cannot do more than hump anoather lab where I live but if there were deer around I would certainly keep him in a special full body harness that causes them to be pulled from the chest downwards if they try to bolt.
Even if that was what actually happened that's not the dog slipping its lead, is it? That's having a dog that you can't control in public.
Big difference.
Unfortunately I've all too often seen people walking their dogs with flimsy leads instead of harnesses and more often than not with a loose grip. Have also seen huge powerful dogs being walked by slightly built individuals who in no way could control their dog if it bolted. The other day while using a shared path on leaving work I stopped and waited for somebody passing whose dog was off lead and racing about. They told me not to worry that it was a harmless creature. I told them I'm not to know that and that the creature should be on a short lead regardless. They didn't seem bothered.
A friend of mine is a Police Dog Handler and has a huge beautiful German Shepherd. This dog never leaves his side when walking or pulls away and if it does try one word settles it. Though that will be down to training. I feel that if folk have a dog as a pet they need to be trained how to look after them and those damn extendable leads as well as leads over three feet need to be banned.
To me slipped his lead suggests the owner still has the lead but *for reasons* the dog is no longer attached. Seems very unlikely.
Either he was walking the dog off his lead, or the dog pulled the lead from his (or his son's) grasp. The only way for the owner to have the lead and the dog to be loose is if the lead or collar snapped. Which surely should have been offered to the court as defence.
Leads do not spontaneously detach from collars or harnesses, nor do collars fall off of dogs.
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