At a time when the years of loyal serice to the capital by Battersea Dogs Home are being celebrated by having a set of stamps issued in their honour, you can’t have avoided noticing that there is increasing debate about the future of the Dangerous Dogs Act.
I’m old enough to remember the start of the much-decried knee-jerk legislation. I worked in London at one of the RSPCA hospitals at the time and we certainly saw lots of Bull Terriers. Lovely dogs, almost all of them.
But we looked on in astonishment to find that it was no longer legal to keep a Dogo Argentino, a Fila Braziliera or a Japanese Tosa in the UK.
What were we to do? How could we live in the ghastly new world order? Did anyone, anywhere in the UK have any idea what any of these dogs might look like?
So it was lunacy right from the start.
And now as then, the news is regularly littered with stories about children being savaged by Rottweilers.
‘I’ve got Rotties’ the vox pop man on the news bulletin said ‘ Lovely dogs. Big bears. But what were they doing leaving them with the kids?’
The question I might ask is what on earth is the point of having a dog that you can’t leave with children? Having a dog is meant to be fun, enjoyable and relaxing. It is meant to enhance your life, not add to the risks and put those that you know and love in mortal danger just because they looked at the dog the wrong way or pulled it’s tail in fun.
There are increasing calls for the law to be changed, and it’s about time.
Make it obligatory to microchip all dogs, and make the registered owner liable in every way for their dog’s behaviour, with serious punitive consequences for the owner for any infringement of a simple canine code of conduct.
It’s really not that difficult.