Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

We are having a fabulous summer and where I live on the Tutukaka Coast of Northland we get lots of wonderful visitors from all over NZ. And their dogs.  Now, we are dog owners and at our eco village we actually have kiwi roaming between the houses at night. Quite noisy actually, always calling for each other. There is a ‘no uncontrolled dog’ policy at the village so it was with quite a lot of trepidation that we finally got a puppy two years ago. We were still four days a week in Auckland and our daughter was a co-carer. So, we put plenty of training into her, she only stays on our section inside the village, she is on a lead walking outside our section and never outside after dark. It seems to be working well. Because I hate to say dog lovers, the main reason Kiwi are still declining in most parts of NZ is attack by dogs. Habitat destruction was a big one. Then Mustelids, ferrets, stoats, weasels and wild cats can kill 80% of kiwi chicks but once they are six months old they can defend themselves, but never