Italian train company Trenitalia on Tuesday buckled under pressure from the government and animal rights activists by suspending a ban on 'big' dogs travelling on its trains.
Trenitalia agreed to a 14-day reprieve just one day before the ban on dogs weighing more than six kilogrammes was due to come into force.
Welfare Undersecretary Francesca Martini, who negotiated the suspension, said the government and Trenitalia would continue talks to resolve dog accessibility issues.
But for the moment, ''dogs can continue to travel as the law provides, with a lead and a muzzle as the responsibility of their owners,'' she assured Italian pet owners.
Trenitalia explained that they decided to crack down on medium-sized and large dogs earlier this month after efforts to clean up carriages failed to stop passengers from being bitten by parasites while aboard trains.
A 62-year-old female passenger started legal proceedings against the company two weeks ago after allegedly being bitten on a Rome-Agrigento train, while in October last year three women sued the company after discovering their compartment was ''hopping with lice'' on a night train between southern Italy and Rome.
But pet lovers have been up in arms since the company made dogs the scapegoats for their bug troubles.
''I want to underline that the parasites found in the carriages are first of all bedbugs, that is parasites that live off human beings and not dogs,'' Martini said Tuesday.
Animal rights organisation LAV praised Martini for her work and called off a nationwide protest scheduled for the first day of the ban which would have seen owners of 'oversized' dogs and their pets cram into trains and stations in an act of civil disobedience.
It too stressed that hygiene problems on trains ''are absolutely not ascribable to the few four-legged passengers'' and said it hoped further talks would allow Trenitalia to reach a solution that ''favours rather than obstructs the transport of millions of dogs who are an integral part of so many Italian families''.
But consumer rights association ADUC hit out at the idea of bilateral talks between the government and Trenitalia on the issues.
''The problem of cleanliness on the trains - falsely reputed to be a question of dog fleas - is not a government issue but a problem relating to the monopoly's lack of services,'' it said.
But Trenitalia chief Mauro Moretti reiterated that passengers ''have the right to sit in their seat without this having been occupied shortly before by an animal''.
Moretti added that the dog ban was also designed to placate passengers who had ''submerged'' the company with letters of complaint about dangerous dog breeds being allowed in enclosed carriages with children and the elderly.
''We're thinking around the issue and I don't know what solution we will arrive at,'' he said.
