The latest in dog horror stories about the 4 year old child mauled to death in Liverpool http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/8386023.stm does nothing to help my intense phobia of dogs and particularly certain breeds of dogs. Many people have expressed that I have a unjustisfied orirrational fear of these dogs and that I put myself in danger by being fearful. I have had too many close encounters with undisciplined 'dangerous' dogs to accept this fear is unfounded, including the fact that my younger brother was badly bitten by a family pet when we were children.
This lastest sad story happened in an area said to have quite a number of young men with dangerous dogs is not much different from many inner city areas in the UK. Apparently Merseyside Police held a dangerous dogs amnesty after a previous child death near by and netted 80 illegally-held dogs. This is a scary number of dangerous dogs being treated as pets.
In his article, 'Breeding out aggression in dogs' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/17/weapon-dogs-attacks-traits ) Dave Hill reports that Kit Malthouse, deputy for policing in London, wrote an article in response to a sharp rise in the Metropolitan police's seizure of canine suspects and of prosecutions of owners under the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act (DDA) calling for some measures to 'breed' out these aggressive breeds.
Here are some links to dog stories recently (3 from the guardian article)
Of course, the dog lovers are up in arms but how much longer can we blame the owners whilst people especially children are getting maimed and killed? I do not really care if you are macho enough to make your pet 'pit-bull' as friendly as a lamb, many of these young handlers also have a macho image of being able to control such a vicious creature until such time as they get bored and stop being careful. We have to recognise that some of these dogs have been bred for aggression and their status symbol as pets is dangerous not only for the owners but for the rest of the society. What is the world coming to when we are afraid to take a walk in the park because of the potential of an out of control dog with an uncontrollable handler?
I am not naïve enough to think that we can stop all dogs biting or even killing but let's not have any more children killed by these animals that have been bred to do just that!
Maybe this deer with an attitude has had enough to the point of fighting back - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/8303280.stm?
[First published on my NotTheNews blog on specified date]