Dog owner Paul Rook finds it absurd that the mayor of Assen insists on recovering all the storage costs of his Rottweiler Renzo from him, while his dog returned broken and emaciated from the municipal dog depot. He said that today before the Council of State.
If it is up to mayor Marco Out, Rook will still have to pay 4,600 euros for the storage and custody of Renzo, who has been involved in three biting incidents since 2016. After the latest incident, the Asser picked up dog swatter Renzo and placed the Rottweiler in a doghouse in August 2018.
The mayor initially did not want the dog to ever return to the Rook family. But in the end, partly under pressure from a court decision, Renzo returned to his owner on May 24, 2019. This was possible after Rook had promised, among other things, to castrate the dog definitively.
“But I got a broken dog back. He was emaciated, had bad skin and bad teeth. He wasn’t walked once during his storage. Since he got back things are getting better. Partly because he is back in the loving environment of our family is. He is eleven years old now, but he is no longer the dog he used to be,” Rook said during the hearing.
That actually only revolved around the question of whether the mayor can recover the full storage and care costs of Renzo from Rook. The Groningen administrative judge thought that was a bit too much, because the mayor did not want to talk to Rook about a solution at the beginning of 2019, while the dog owner was willing to do so. For that reason, the administrative court reduced the custody account by 1,300 euros. The mayor did not accept that, who necessarily wants the full amount from Rook for reasons of principle and therefore appealed to the Council of State.
Rook finds it absurd that the mayor is going to the country’s highest administrative court for such an amount. “This whole thing has already cost me 50,000 euros in litigation and other amounts. The municipality was still willing to make a deal before the Groningen court and share the costs, but after consultation with B&W, the deal still fell through.”
Judge and State Councilor Joop Drop then noted that the mayor is apparently quite armored. Rook also noted that the dog policy in the municipality of Assen is ruthless and tough as a result of an “overzealous” boa. “I have had many reactions from other Assen residents with dogs. They often did not have the money to protest against the seizures. It is nowhere as bad as in Assen.”
According to the municipality, this is not too bad and it is clear that the mayor has rightly placed Renzo in custody after three bite incidents. And then you can also charge the owner for all costs, says the mayor. The Council of State will decide in a few weeks whether and how much storage costs Rook will still have to pay