Boy 10 mauled to death at holiday park

[Witchofzog]

I can't link on this phone but it is on most news sites. The owner was found off site after a police hunt so possibly fled when she knew her dog had killed a child. It's just awful - a young boy probably just going to the loo in the middle of the night on a campsite having his life ended because of a dangerous dog and an owner who can't control and/ or keep it securely away

@Hearhere I don't think it's intrusive at all. If you wanted my dogs chipped, and you have access upon scanning my dog (maybe not my address etc) but every dog has a code, that you can then hand over to the police and the police can tell you whether the dog has been involved in other incidents etc..and then the police would take the appropriate steps, to prosecute the owners and seize the dog (if it was an unprovoked attack)

If the dog hasn't bitten anyone but you feel, I have no control over my dogs, you would then give the code to the authorities, who would then come out and do an assessment on my dogs and I?

That's just a quick answer for you..getting down to the nitty gritty of it, who would be paying for the authorities etc..I don't know.

But if somebody came up to you and suddenly just starting hitting up, dragging you around..you would do absolutely nothing? You wouldn't defend yourself? I know I would certainly do anything to protect myself and get that person off me.

In the case you describe the dog bit a child who was being cruel to him, there is no doubt that child was in the wrong, but still the fact that the dog felt 'entitled' (I put that in quotation marks because I am clearly being anthropomorphic) to chastise the child tells you something about how the dog experiences its status relative to humans
had it been an adult man being cruel to the dog the dog would experience itself as a subordinate creature not at liberty to retaliate, or at least not retaliate to the same extent

LittleMissHappy19

Sorry but your suggestions are unworkable, we ve few police, even less dog wardens and national shortage of vets, so who exactly is going to police your suggestions?
It also relies on the co-op of dog owners and the problem dog owners wont be helping!
e.g. Over one million dogs are not chipped, despite it being a legal requirement.

Dogs are not a necessity for most people and we need some quick and easily enforceable laws, such as very expensive licensing & taking away certain types of dogs.

In any dog attack the default should be PTS, once you start putting in ifs and buts, those with access to a good lawyer will be getting off.

We need to act quickly, the death and injury toll cause by bites should be totally unacceptable.

“But if somebody came up to you and suddenly just starting hitting up, dragging you around..you would do absolutely nothing? You wouldn't defend yourself?“
Well, if the person doing it was a child, I doubt if I would punch them in the face.....

I think that dog owners would feel happier if they thought proper consideration would be given to what actually happened during any dog attack incidents

Lately I've seen people walking dogs with labels on them like 'friendly' and 'nervous' etc, feels potentially quite helpful?
feels like the way forward is to take dogs much more seriously and pay close attention to what's really going on with them, but also to really really underline the fact that this is a serious commitment to take on, you can't just do it lightly you've got to be responsible and think through all the implications of having being a dog owner, just collecting animals willy-nilly is irresponsible and cruel

It also relies on the co-op of dog owners and the problem dog owners wont be helping!

Exactly. Which is why the pp who said it was naive to suggest we should have stronger controls - because irresponsible people will get round them - is so wrong.

Controls need to be as simple, efficient and cost effective as possible. Banning big dogs, or at the very least a much longer list of breeds (defined very widely to stop the current nonsense of arguments in the courts over what is and is not a banned breed dog) would be straightforward and very effective.

Elaborate administrative systems would be inefficient, expensive and be exploited by the unscrupulous.

I don't agree with that @Hearhere I'm sure if a dog was being dragged around, hit, antagonised by an adult man..the dog would bite, that is the one of the only ways a dog can protect itself.
Like if a cat was being antagonised the cat will scratch the hell out of you and bite you. Every animal has a way they see of defending themselves.

We worked very hard to make sure our dogs are well trained, and got so much useful information from a dog behavioural specialist.

Pecking order is crucial.

That's why even though my dogs had been around many children, when we did have children and my toddler started to crawl, walk etc..we knew the appropriate work that needed to be done, so that our dogs see our children above them in the pecking order. As it's completely different a new little human suddenly coming into our home.

I don't know after all the work we have put into our dogs, whether if I was to drag my dog around, hit it etc, if it would bite me or not..I have never tried and wouldn't be so cruel to attempt it.

Of course on the face of it, the suggestions of chipping etc by @Hearhere and other posters and my suggestions of mandatory dog training lessons, all at the expensive of the dog owner, along with all the other suggestions made by me and others, would no doubt reduce incidents happening..but I do understand that it's more complex than this to put into place..and that is why we are all so invested in this thread..to work out, how these suggestions could be made to work.

Sorry my phone has gone bonkers! Don't know why some came out in bold and some not!

I really wish someone would answer my question.

So the law comes in that all dogs over the height of say 3 feet become banned dogs. So breeds like Wolfhounds, Great Danes (both some of the softest soppiest breeds going) get banned.

Which other breeds are included in the ban depends on their height. So there are 2 German Shepherds, one over 3ft and one under. Does only the one over get banned? If both get banned because they are the same breed that makes a laughing stock of the proposed criteria

I envisage a ban would be on dogs above a size generally rather less than an Alsatian. It would need to catch all bull breeds too, among others. And it would be likely to combine characteristics like height with neck and jaw size etc.

It might be that we’d need to introduce a component of breed into the test too, if owners tried to circumvent it.

I’m not aware that there are breeds of dwarf Alsatian, but if there are they probably could get through.

I would like @KissingInTheRain to still explain to me, if all these breeds are banned, how they wouldn't become extinct.

I was told that was utter nonsense by you..but I don't understand if they are all banned..How the heck would they not become extinct?

Please can you answer this..

Do you mean extinct in the normal way, i.e. none in the world? Or do you mean ‘extinct’ in a special way, like none in the UK, or none in St Austell, say, or Glasgow, or none in your house?

when we talk about extinction we usually mean at the species level, not so much the variety/breed level,
we still have the dog genome, the domestic dog is not at risk of extinction, there is a good argument to be made that the level of inbreeding required to keep breeds pure leads to harmful genetic mutations

why does it matter if there are no more of a certain breed of dog, new breeds are being created all the time

why does it matter if there are no more of a certain breed of dog, new breeds are being created all the time

Only someone with no appreciation of dogs would say such a thing. It's like saying it doesn't matter that the Notre Dame burned down because there are plenty of other cathedrals, or that it wouldn't matter if potatoes became unavailable because we still have other sources of carbs.

Each breed has its own unique qualities and is special in its own way.

I understand that people have affections for different breeds, but breeds are phased in and phased out continually as different types of dogs go in and out of fashion
the breeds are fluid categories, they shift over time, they are not necessarily fixed or distinctly delineated

Kissingintherain, yes but if the restrictions or bans are on height my argument is that within the same breed there can be variations.

As I said my 2 dogs are both male and the same breed but one is a good deal taller than the other. Now if the taller one fell within the restrictions and the smaller one didn't surely you can see that would be pretty silly?

You could not say just because one dog was taller than the other it would be more likely to attack someone.

If there were new laws brought in I feel they would have to mainly be on breed but that would be difficult because apart from the dogs that have already been banned what breeds are supposedly so dangerous?

@Mydog, I think what we are discussing is some set up where all the dimensions of the dog would be taken into account and there would be an algorithm to classify it according to how large and powerful it is overall, so it wouldn't just be height, it wouldnt just be weight.

Point being we need some way to classify/categorise dogs that doesn't just rely on the breed category

You could not say just because one dog was taller than the other it would be more likely to attack someone

we need to separate 2 things that are often conflated and confused:
1-the ability of the dog to cause harm, this can be determined using, for example, such metrics as the height, weight, size of the dog, neck size, jaw size bite strength...I mean really this could be done just by a quick 3D scan of the dog
2- the propensity of the dog to cause harm, this could be determined by looking at the history of the breed ( if the dog can be identified as a member of a particular breed) and the history of the individual dog

Weight would no doubt figure strongly in the assessment. An inch or two in height between dogs of a similar breed would be unlikely to make any difference.

I suppose an especially fat small dog might run into trouble but I would expect that to be an implausible scenario.

Sounding quite condescending there In as you put it the 'normal way' none left in the world..

So between the three of you in agreement here on this weight, height, jaw strength..what are you actually going to do about it? What are your next steps to putting this into place?

I'm very interested

Right, so these breeds wouldn’t exist anywhere else in the world? Because we stop people owning them in the UK?

That’s just not true and is not a sensible objection.

Next steps is a matter for government. For my part I’ll carry on making the arguments for proper controls on dogs. These things tend to happen after a head of steam builds up. Often incrementally, and often under other influences too, like owners being bankrupted in civil suits by victims of out of control dogs. Whatever brings it about I think there will be change because the situation isn’t tolerable for the majority of reasonable people, including many dog owners.

People speaking up with their concerns and wish for change is just a part of it.

Presumably you ask about next steps because you’d like to think that no matter what happens your hobby of keeping large and intimidating dogs will be safe.

Right, so these breeds wouldn’t exist anywhere else in the world? Because we stop people owning them in the UK?

So say your theory is correct, that deaths are due to large, tall, strong jawed dogs..it doesn't matter if other people die in other countries?

Presumably you ask about next steps because you’d like to think that no matter what happens your hobby of keeping large and intimidating dogs will be safe.

I own a Basset Hound and a Jack Russell

If I lived in other countries I might well take the same view. But I don’t, so I confine my view to what I think should be done in this country.

My apologies, I had assumed you owned Staffs or the like. In which case I cannot see what you have to worry about and why you would object to these eminently sensible and long overdue public safety - and dog safety - measures.