To wonder when the UK government plan to revisit the dangerous dogs act?

[EbbyEbs]

Woman killed by American Bulldogs.

This is just another victim to add to the list of dog fatalities in recent years - yet another American Bulldog.

Britain must have one of the most pathetic dog regulations in the world - only 3 breeds in the list and two of those breeds most people have never heard of.

When will the government do something?? How many more people need to die?

And it’s not just about banning breeds - they need to tighten up the laws in owning dogs in the first place.

Many states in America have tight regulations around many breeds common in the UK including Shar Pei, Rhodesian Ridgebacks, Dobermann and even German shepherds.

AIBU to think Britain needs to wake up to the dangers of irresponsible dog ownership?

Thing is, the dog laws lead to people getting XL bullies instead of Pitbulls.

You ban XL bullies, they'll find another "status" dog.

Sadly you can't fix stupid.

I haven't read the whole thing but I disagree. I don't know where you are but here in NI dogs do need to be licensed. Particular breeds are not necessarily dangerous, it's bad training, socialisation and overall treatment that creates "dangerous and aggressive" dogs.

Hell some of the friendliest dogs I've met have been rottweilers and staffies, chihuahuas and bichons however are nasty little fuckers who'll snap at you if you look at em wrong, purely as they were poorly socialised and assumed harmless because they're small

Yanbu but we have a dog OWNER problem. I cant tell you how many dogs I see off lead not under control.
Bring in laws that any responsible dog owner would follow any way. those that dont cant own another for x amount of years.

Thing is, it is the owners. Whenever these attacks occur, it’s never the docile family pet, it’s always the dog of a friend of a friend or one which has only recently been acquired. In a case a few months ago where a 2 year old was killed, the dog had been bought from some website days previously, no history, no nothing. The parents should have been prosecuted, but then people say things like “losing their child is enough punishment.” I disagree. Losing their child was their fault for being so negligent when buying a dog off the internet.

What needs changing isn’t the kinds of breeds, it’s how they come about.

So:

The profiting from the sale of animals needs to be made illegal. That way you shut down both the puppy farming industry and the back yard breeders overnight.

Selling dogs on the internet through sites like gumtree and pets for homes needs to be made illegal. There need to be approved sites only where you need to be a licenced breeder with proof of genetic testing of your animals to be allowed to breed and sell dogs.

Dogs who are considered not rehomeable need to be put down.

And we need to stop importing so called rescues from abroad where the care and history of the animals is questionable at best.

They're not "thick as pig shit." They're actually very loving, family oriented dogs. And they are as trainable as German Shepherds.

People don't seem to train their dogs these days. The amount of dogs I see pulling like crazy on their leads, jumping up at people and acting haphazardly is the norm now. I'm in my 50s and when I was growing up dogs seemed to behave themselves whilst being walked.

I agree with this, it’s also not always clear cut what breed a dog is based on the standards laid out in law.

Advanced training in what though? I have two working spaniels (actually working not just from working stock) who are impeccably trained for their work. Both ftch and the smaller one will bite the hand of you if a stranger tries to touch her. We also have several guard dogs on the farm where my pony is who are trained but to a different standard again. A universal approach won’t work because it will adversely affect decent folk and the kind of numpties who own the dogs you’re describing won’t bother their arse anyway so what’s the point?

It's the owners not the dogs. Neither blue Cross or rspca support banning breeds.
Where would the money come from to police it? And who would deal with the thousands of dogs whose owners couldn't afford mandatory license fees, training etc?

I was thinking about this today. Muscular, intimidating dogs attract arsehole owners. You don’t get these idiots keeping 5 cocker spaniels in a small house. If you ban a breed they will look for another one. It would be more effective to reintroduce dog licenses, to limit the number of dogs per property or to require male dogs to be neutered.

I’m not surprised about Jack Russell’s being on the list. They are very efficient killers but their size limits the size of their prey. I know two good tempered ones. I know dozens that are fine until they’re not. My (much larger) dogs have been attacked by the little bastards.

My in laws have a very old grumpy lady Yorkie (her ancient ways are funny) but she has that Yorkie nature of yapping and thinking she's a lot tougher than her size allows her.

They very naively offered to babysit their granddaughter's boyfriend's American Bully male one night whilst she went to a party. A couple of hours in the bully lost his patience with the yapping and went for the Yorkie, knocked FIL over and took a chunk out of his leg in the process of him defending his dog.

Not nice dogs on any level

my dog would kill a cat if it came in its garden. It's private property. It doesn't make a dog aggressive to humans at all. I clap my hands when I let him out but there's not much else I can do , it's his garden.

So would my GS, I think. However, he's never been able to get at a cat for us to know this for sure. We only walk him on a harness and a muzzle and he's only allowed off-lead in the garden or in a field we rent out. We did take him to training classes and he was fine with dogs at first, but then was attacked by a JRT and now just seems to hates other animals. Loves any people, so affectionate and loving and ernest with people, a completely different dog with animals, think he sees them as a threat/danger.

We don't tend to get cats in our garden because any that have ever come in just get chased straight out again. If I notice a cat is on our conservatory roof while he's in the garden, I will take him back inside and let the cat go on its way, or simply hold his collar and shoo said cat out of my garden, but it's very rare that this happens.

Lots of dogs aren't cat friendly. Used to have a dog who was absolutely fine with cats she came face to face with, we also had a pet cat and they would play together. But if she saw one in the garden while she was inside she would bark bark bark at it. Which was weird because we had a cat that lived with us like I said.

There are so many irresponsible pet owners. I think dog licences would be a good idea.
Lots of people owning dogs they don't know how to control or train.
My neighbours have one of those XL bully dogs, it's a terrifying thing. I even put up an extra fence as I am terrified of it getting into my garden when I have a young child.
They haven't had it neutered and parade it around, they love people commenting on how it's one of "those" dogs. They have no idea how to train it or control it.

I’m not a fan of chihuahuas but they aren’t dangerous

This^ and Ditto. Also bitten by a JRT.

Humans need to start taking responsibility for their own actions.

Someone has posted on Facebook that the deceased lady was the breeder of the dogs- they posted her page advertising the puppies.

There are enough bloody dogs on this planet who don’t have homes as it is.

I'd quite like to see compulsory third party insurance as a requirement for dog ownership. In my utopia there would be accredited training courses which would decrease premiums. It's likely certain breeds would be more expensive to insure which may act as a disincentive to own?

What’s a KS spaniel?

Maybe we should stop breeding them for pet use. Mongrels come in all shapes and sizes and seem healthy compared to these pedigrees. Maybe they are less likely to have aggression issues as well.

I honestly think it's not about the breed of dog it's about the person owning the dog.

We need to focus more on who we sell the dogs to instead of what breed they are- when living abroad my family owned pit bulls and they were well trained and very sweet however I've met labradors over here 10x more agressive. If you buy a dog like an XL bully or a Doberman (for example) you need to expect to pay a decent sum of money training them. (And also preferably not be an 18 year old wanting to look "cool" with a badly bred dog".

The dangerous dogs act needs to be rewritten in general because it's ridiculous that dogs can be seized just for fitting the measurements of a pitbull when DNA tests say differently.

I own 2 cane corsos (mastiffs) and a German shepherd and all are well trained and friendly dogs. Better behaved than some of the cockapoos around my area for sure.

It's not about the breed it's who you sell the dog to - aggressive dogs are rarely the fault of the dog, it's due to the owner and backyard breeding.

Don't buy a dog and expect it to be perfect without putting the training in and then we'd have no issues.

American bully XL can weigh approx 10 and a half stone.

A Jack Russel can weigh approx one stone if very much on the larger side.

I know which I would rather be angry and coming at me, one I could fight off, the other would need a police marksman.

isn't neutered

Unfortunately neutering is not the cure to dog aggression that people think it is.

Aggression between male dogs is mediated largely by testosterone; however, aggression towards people, female dogs and other animals is far more weakly linked to his hormones. If you think about it, it makes sense: if you’ve got to fight other males to get access to a mate, there’s no point in fighting against the females, or against other species who aren’t competing with you.

But, aggression that is directed towards people, other animals, or generalised (anything that moves and looks suspicious) is most likely to be fear-based aggression. And unfortunately, fear-based aggression is often made WORSE (or even triggered) by castration. What can happen is a fairly rapid drop in blood testosterone, the very hormone that was keeping them self-confident and relaxed in the presence of potentially threatening objects. So, we might well imagine that the dog’s thought process of “yes, that person’s a bit scary, but I’m sure I could take them so I don’t need to worry” changes to “oh no, that person’s scary, I need to drive them off before they can hurt me”. Without that confidence-boosting hormone, dogs who are prone to anxiety often get a lot worse. Some forms of aggression may actually be worse after neutering

Why would anybody want three powerful dogs like that? I seriously don't see the attraction. How many acres do you live on?* *

Bs about the dog and cat in his garden being badly trained. Our dogs were all proper trained yet one of them would go after the cat.
Like as if cat owners care that cats are killing other animals including pet rabbits etc.

Re banned breeds. Where I am from we don't have any banned but it is quite socially unacceptable to have badly trained dog. Or not trained at all. You become a twat of the neighborhood. There still are attacks, but I've seen so many, soooo many untrained dogs in UK it's scary! Lots of people also stuff large dog into small house/flat and then there is a wonder why dogs become frustrated and destructive.

It's skyrocketting because people are getting unsuitable breeds and don't train them whatsoever. It's fucking sad and infuriating

My daughters boyfriend has an xl bully puppy. He's now living with my dd and dgs in a flat with two dogs. It worries me so much. My dgs has scratch marks all over him from the xl bully puppy playing with him. We have dogs, my parents and inlaws have dogs. We have never had this with any of our puppies. My dd won't hear anything bad said about the breed and the other breed that lives there. My dgs is 7 and loves the dogs. I just don't understand the need for this breed in a family setting.

The people who are the problem wouldn’t get dog licenses but that would mean that when the wardens get the first report of a dog behaving aggressively, they’d have grounds to seize it straight away. They wouldn’t have to prove it was dangerous or give the owner a warning. Not having a license would be enough to take the dog from the owner permanently.