The data Hamilton City Council’s Animal Education and Control Team collects is now freely available to anyone curious about our pooch population and how it is managed.

We’ve published our dog data (dating back to 2001) for you to view on our website or download from the Waikato Data Portal.

Ever wondered how many beagles live in Hamilton? 93. Want to know how many of them are brown? 5.

As well as a breakdown of the number, breed and colour of our canine citizens, the data also includes:

• the number, reason and outcome of dog complaints e.g. the most common complaint is about dogs roaming in a public place.

• the number, reason and location of dog infringements e.g. of the 174 infringements in 2018/19, 148 resulted from a complaint.

• impounded dog information e.g. 173 impounded dogs were rehomed in 2018/19.

No personal details of dog owners or complainants are made available.

Chris Mardon, the Council’s Chief Data Officer, says: “We’ve done this as part of our drive to make the data we collect open and accessible to the public, and to show the community the work our Animal Education and Control Team does.”

“As with the majority of the data we capture, it is public information available on request. What we’ve done is made it immediately available, updated daily, and in a format that’s easy to use and navigate.”

The Animal Education and Control data is the Council’s first major addition to the Waikato Data Portal, which launched in April.

The portal provides simple access to open datasets from 12 Waikato councils which can be searched, reviewed and downloaded in a variety of formats.

Click here to see the dog data on the Council’s website, or visit the Waikato Data Portal to download or connect via API.

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