To think having XL bullies around children is child neglect?

XL Bullies have been run like a pyramid scheme for a few years now.

The high prices of these XL Bullies seem to be predicated on the idea that if you buy one then you can breed it, sell the puppies for equally high prices, and make a lot of money in the process.

Of course, like all pyramid schemes, the bottom eventually falls out of the market - given the number of puppies well over 8 weeks old that are being advertised on Pets4Homes and Scumtree - I'd say that supply was already outstripping demand even before the ban was introduced.

DFriend is a vet and says it's quite routine for these bullies (of all sizes) to be unneutered, uninsured, and with owners who say they can't pay. She's even had an owner say they couldn't pay for an emergency spay due to pyometra.

The licence did very little to improve safety - it was just a tax, like the TV licence, and often ignored.

I'd be in favour of a licensing system that involved theory (pre dog purchase) and practical lessons though.

because we were burgled four times in two years due to what we do for work. Our dogs are trained to bark at our fence lines and since we have had them we have not been targeted. There are far more dangerous things then a well bred and trained dog doing the job it was born to do.

You don't need an XL Bully for that. I've got a Jack Russell X who saw off a burglar once, and has a bark so deep the postman thought he was 3x the size until he saw him.

All you need is a dog that's barky though to make the burglar thing there's easier pickings.

Unless "what we do for work" is actually the drugs trade, the equation might change then.

I was advocating a decent pedigree dog breeder. Few of these dogs kill @VeterinaryCareAssistant A decent pedigree dog where you see the parents and puppies is unlikely to be dangerous. More troubling is why people want dogs bred to fight.

Exactly what @TheCupboardUnderTheStairsAtTheMojoDojoCasaHouse has said, completely agree.

Out of interest, how many of these responsible owners have had their dogs neutered? Because unless there is a behavioural or medical reason, that’s what sensible owners do. Unless of course, they make a nice little wallet of money from breeding them…

The details of the scheme are already clear, and set out in the DDA1991 https://www.gov.uk/control-dog-public/banned-dogs

The costs are not especially onerous.

Microchipping - already a legal requirement, so should be in place before the puppy is sold, regardless of the ban

Neutering - a routine part of dog ownership that should already have been budgeted for regardless of the ban (if someone said to you "I want a golden retriever but I can't afford spaying" you'd tell them not to get a dog in the first place). Regardless, my local council offers it at £210 for a spay and £120 castration - a one off cost.

Third Party Insurance - £25 per year via Dogs Trust membership. I pay over £600 per year in health insurance for my little middle aged dog despite never having claimed.

Secure fencing - should already be in place regardless of which breed it is.

Muzzle - £10-15

Lead - if they haven't already got that, I don't know what to tell you.

If an owner cannot afford up to £225 in one off costs and £25 per year thereafter, then they cannot afford to feed the dog - and I'd love to know how they can apparently afford £2000 for a puppy but not the cost of a spay 🤔

The people contacting you are mostly the responsible ones. You just aren't hearing from the significant number of irresponsible ones.

If they do dump their dogs after the ban, they'll be committing a criminal offence and that dog will inevitably be put down.

Please advise owners to buy a dog responsibly. From a registered breeder and a specific breed recognised by the Kennel Club.
@TizerorFizz pedigree dogs are often just as inbred or unhealthy as any back yard breeder dog.
There is a documentary called Pedigree Dogs Exposed that you might want to watch.

The best place to get a dog would be a rescue centre if you meet the criteria, and if not then a breeder where you can see the pups with mum and meet the dad. A house where ideally the parents were health tested, and where the pups have been exposed to lots of different things - children, dogs, cats, noises etc from birth (3 weeks - 12 weeks is the most critical period for socialisation), which is not always a pedigree KC registered breeder.

Also, crossbreeds or mongrels can make excellent family pets. I've got a variety of dogs of different breeds and they're all very similar if brought up the same way, with just a few different traits.

I am really not worried about having packs of out of control bullies roaming the streets really

I am glad to see them banned though. The video footage of poor Ian Price is absolutely horrific. No need to keep something capable of killing a grown man as a pet.

@WiddlinDiddlin Why do people want to own these cross breeds? They don’t even know what they have bought! It’s not acceptable. Please advise owners to buy a dog responsibly. From a registered breeder and a specific breed recognised by the Kennel Club. It’s just not good enough to say these owners don’t know what they have got! Always advise an owner chooses a responsible BREED of dog. Not a cross breed with dubious parentage. Not knowing where your dog comes from regarding parentage is appalling. We should never accept that is good dog ownership.

Far too many posters are just saying those easy 3 words “ban the bully”. It’s a slogan. Not a workable policy. How do you ban them and remove them? No one is answering this! What does banning mean in practice?

Vets have already said that once a dog type is banned other cross breeds are bred with similar characteristics. It’s difficult to ban anything successfully as we have discovered. It’s people who cause these dogs to exist. Choose a better dog!!!

So, those in favour of a ban and cheering Sunak and Braverman on in their rushed and ill-thought out (totally unthought out) rash promises and statements...

How are you all feeling about the massive increase in potentially banned XL Bully types being dumped in the streets by the ignorant twats, criminal breeders and general lowlives that caused them to be a problem in the first place.

I mean, I know I personally feel SO much safer with big unsocialised, badly trained dogs being dumped in public... and of course when details of how an exemption register and certification will actually work, and the cost implications become clear, we will see more dumped dogs running the streets, panicked and uncontrolled.

It's just fucking marvellous, it really is.

For those with the 'all xl bully owners are vicious morons' attitude - absolutely not, I have lost count of the number who have contacted me via various channels in the last 10 days, seeking advice on how to keep their dogs safe, how to ensure they are being responsible owners. On the whole, they're already doing all the right things and are certainly making no greater mistakes than I see routinely trotted out on here by people who think they know what they're talking about.

Some are shocked to discover their dog is likely to be banned, they didn't realise they HAD an 'xl bully killer dog'... they thought they had a mastiff x, a staffy x, a cane corso x, an American Bulldog...

Responsible owners are doing what they can - irresponsible ones are, in combination with our reckless and ridiculous government, putting others at even MORE risk than ever before.

@SleepingStandingUp But the difference is that the risks of sharp knives, kettles and painkillers can be easily managed: keep them out of reach of small children and teach them about the dangers so that once they are big enough to reach them they understand the need for caution. You can't just put a 60kg dog on a high-up shelf, so it's pretty irrelevant as a comparison.

Yes ban them! I'm sick of people making excuses for this breed. It's bred to be an aggressive killer! Bull dogs were bred to bring down a bull! So what chance does a person have against an XL one, if they attack?! Oh, but "Other, smaller dogs attack" Yes, but you could get them off before they kill you or your child! There are bad dogs AND bad owners. This is the case with XL's, so it's a perfect storm! And yes, if you have an XL, which is more than capable of killing your child, while you watch on helplessly, you are a bad parent. Oh, but "The bad dog breeders will just move onto another breed and that will be the same" So, we will ban that breed too!

A tiny dog if it was on my child and I could get my hands around it's neck I pretty sure I could kill it quite fast ( I'd be highly motivated to find the strength). I'm not sure I could with a bully xl. I'd have to get my arm.around it's neck. It could just turn and rip my face off. A Yorkshire terror? No chance at all I couldn't strangle one in under a minute. If it was bleeding my child out, any thin necked dog. I'd kill it easy.

It honestly isn't the same. Xl bully looks stronger than my dh. I wouldn't win if dh wanted to kill me and pretend I could is dim.

Lots of things can kill children of they're mishandled / left unattended. A bottle of Naproxen. A hot kettle. Knives. If you leave a 3 yo unattended with any of those, there's a massive risk. But you don't charge parents with neglect for having them.

It will do for the moment. No legislation is permanently watertight. Everything becomes less effective over time.

Meanwhile several lives could be saved while we fanny about trying to think of a better system.

@LlynTegid And how do you police that? And then another cross breed comes along and? It’s not listed. It’s the people who own such dogs and breeders that need to be controlled. Maybe prosecute breeders? If you can find them. Or dob in the owners? And then who kills off the dogs? Who rounds them up?

It won't completely stop it no. A bit like people drive without licenses and insurance now. It doesn't mean it isn't worth doing though or that it won't make any difference.

@TizerorFizz agree and that is partly why I would support a ban on a limited number of breeds.

The idea that these types will register their dogs snd do associated courses is for the fairies. Responsible people would but we have an underclass of owners who won’t register because they can get away with it! As they did before the license was scrapped decades ago. They want to be under the radar of sensible dog ownership.

Dogs that attack "out of nowhere" is usually because people are oblivious to the signs the dog is showing that it isn't happy. The majority of "cute" videos that I see of dogs and toddlers online have the dog showing clear signs of discomfort.

The other thing that can happen, is that dogs are punished for warning signs, such as growling, so they stop doing that and just go straight to biting.

I'm not sure that banning the XL bully is the answer. Not because I don't think they are a problem (the fatality figures speak for themselves) but just because it hasn't proven to be an effective way of reducing dog attacks. The XL bully has really come about in answer to the ban on American pit bulls. What will come next if they are banned? I think the answer has to lie in stronger regulation of breeding/selling/owning dogs. Stronger penalties for having a dog that attacks someone or another dog. Hopefully, better regulation would improve welfare for the dogs as well.

There's no reason why, in order to get a dog license, people shouldn't be required to do a simple online course about dog care and behaviour and legal responsibilities with a quiz at the end that needs to be passed. The cost could be covered by the license fee. Then there would be no excuse for ignorance.

Also it could be made mandatory for dog attacks requiring medical treatment to be reported. Then we could have some real data to back up moves to manage specific breeds.

I am a huge animal lover but dog ownership culture seems very strange to me (although I admit I’ve never lived with a dog, I’m a cat lady through and through). It almost seems to me that people feel they have a ‘right’ to own and breed these animals, regardless of whether that’s the best thing for their lifestyle or the animal itself (talking about XL bullies or pug dogs which are so disabled they can barely breathe or walk) just because the owner wants it. I live in central London and I used to work with someone who owned multiple husky dogs (she worked full time and obviously didn’t not live rurally) and although I am sure they were majestic animals, I wondered what sort of life they actually had.

I am sure this comment will attract someone who owns multiple husky’s who lives in Dubai and doesn’t have a sled to pull for miles and they’ll insist that their husky dogs have the best mental health ever and actually I’m wrong because they were actually bred to live in a built up area and middle eastern desert climate, but honestly my mind boggles, and I wonder how much social media has to play in it. Same with the recent trend of XL bully dogs posing with very young children. In general, I think humans should just make more sensible decisions and not just have because they want, certainly where other living and sentient beings are involved. I don’t know how you change that culture though.

I personally don’t believe any small child should be left alone with any dog let alone the ‘dangerous’ breeds. I was bitten by a scotty as a child just walking past a shop it lunged at me and I was always taught not to go near dogs I didn’t know. The police told us at the time the dog had bitten the owners grandchildren several times previously but the owner refused to do anything about it.
I think allowing any animal unsupervised near a small child is a form of neglect not only to the child but towards the animal. It’s not the animals fault the adult is incapable of training or appropriately monitoring the animals or children.

Not really...

I mean yes it would give authorities more power to act after an incident (though typically, they run away and hide and often ditch the dog anyway)...

It would catch out the generally decent but chaotic people who are disorganised and forget to sort out paperwork.

The generally decent but ignorant of the rules - this covers quite a lot of people.

The decent but made a mistake/had an accident/freak one off events.

These are not the categories of people causing the real problems. They're not the people intentionally breeding human aggressive dogs, or training dogs to attack people, or intentionally owning dogs to use as weapons.

We already have laws that come into play AFTER an incident, and when dogs killing people was rare, this was deemed 'enough' (I disagree actually, particularly when so many cases were children killed by a dog the parents brought home, and little to no action was taken as 'they've suffered enough' and 'public response would be dire if we did that...')...

So the chances of licencing owners to own dogs actually reducing attacks/deaths is really low - and it would cost a lot of taxpayer money to set up, we have literally none of the systems/databases/infrastructure necessary.

It's been 7 years since chipping dogs was mandatory - not only is it not enforced, we still do not have a single central database, we have nothing insisting all the databases work the same way, or that they talk to each other properly! Effectively... useless.

@Devilsmommy because we were burgled four times in two years due to what we do for work. Our dogs are trained to bark at our fence lines and since we have had them we have not been targeted. There are far more dangerous things then a well bred and trained dog doing the job it was born to do.

It is very rare for a well bred and well trained dog to "snap" out of nowhere. Normally there are literally hundreds of signals dogs are giving out saying that they are uncomfortable or not happy with the situations they have been put into which are ignored by people that have no clue of dog behaviour or communication.

@sadsack78 These people find the money to buy the dog in the first place! It’s not money that’s the issue it’s attitude. It’s belief that these dogs give you status in your world.