An XL Bully dog on the loose at Skryne Church on a July morning last year “caused havoc” while a funeral was taking place there, Navan District Court has been told. Vernon Carroll, Clowanstown, Ross Cross, Tara was summonsed by Meath County Council on a number of counts of alleged offences under the Control of Dog Act 1986. The defendant did not appear in court.
Community warden Alan Nolan told the court that on 23rd July last he got a call from Dunshaughlin Garda Station saying there was an XL Bully-type dog roaming the main road from Dublin to Dunshaughlin. He and a colleague got to Ross Cross and could not locate the dog. They got a further call from the Gardai saying an XL Bully-type dog was at Skryne Church where a funeral was taking place.
They went up to Mr Carroll’s house. Mr Nolan said he had had previous dealings with Mr Carroll’s son three years previously in relation to XL Bully dogs and bulldogs there. He and a colleague went to the house and knocked on the door and asked Mr Carroll Senior where his dogs were. He said the dogs had been missing since last night. “I asked him was he not willing to go out and look for the dog and he said he was very hungover and he had no interest in going out to look for the dogs. I asked him to help us look for the dogs and he refused. At that stage I issued a 10-day notice for two other pit bull dogs on the site and the XL Bully dog that was missing. He said the dog wasn’t aggressive. We
went up towards Skryne and met the dog on the public road”.
The warden said the dog was “very, very aggressive” and next to impossible to get a catchpole on it. It attacked him when he approached. The dog had no collar, no muzzle, no identification tag on it. His colleague brought Mr Carroll down into her van and the dog was very reluctant to go to him. “It was causing traffic chaos and the Gardai arrived and had to block the main road. I then had to drive my van into the ditch to get the dog into the ditch away from the public road. Mr Carroll walked down, put a lead on the dog, used a few expletives and left. To date there is no licence for that dog”.
He added that they had spent half an hour trying to contain the dog on the public road. “It was causing absolute chaos, there were people getting out of cars shouting ‘stop’. Our next phone call would have been to the kennels to get a dart gun”. It was an XL Bully dog derived from a pit bull, he said.
There was no appearance by the defendant in court and at 10.58 on Friday morning Judge Eirinn McKiernan issued an arrest warrant for him.
