There is a lot going on about dogs at the moment. Things are slowly (very slowly) moving through the house of commons and lords about dangerous dogs. Hopefully it will go through about the BSL as well but with how slowly anything to do with dogs goes through I wouldn't be surprised if ten years down the line we are still waiting for them to make decision. Not only the dangerous dogs but pedigree dogs are being shown as bad and unhealthy and then we have the puppy farms, where all those dogs are being kept in cramp conditions and being made to breed. Remind you of anything? Ah yes, battery farms.
I am going to give my opinion on each of these three points over a period of time. Today the rant is about breed specific legislation (BSL).
BSL and the dangerous dogs act. I learnt as much as I could about this when I heard of Lennox. Lennox is a cross breed that was seized for being a pit bull. He is one of many dogs seized and then measured and tested to see whether or not he is a pit bull type. Death Row Dogs was shown last night (24/1/12) at around half ten so I wonder just how many viewers it got. The show was suppose to show how bad these illegal breeds has got and I was all ready to get angry and hate the program but I was in a way surprised. The show did one thing very well, it showed you that the laws in this country are complete failures. There was a dog, a beautiful young male who had been condemned to death for being a 'pit bull type' dog. He was happy, playful, friendly and he was put down because his owner was banned from having dogs. That was the only reason because part of the law states that pit bull type dogs cannot be rehomed. A dog as playful as he was would have found a home but instead they showed you him getting put to sleep, a life wasted. I found it hard to be angry with the women who 'owned' the dog because though she may have been found guilty of cruelty to animals (she hadn't walked this dog or let him out) she talked sense. She said that actually any breed could turn suddenly, they are dogs. How many times do you hear about cats attacking kids? I have a scar on my arm that I have now had for at least 5 years and is still as clear now as it was then and that I got from my cat. I was lucky the scratch didn't need stitches. I have been working at a cattery recently and the guy who owns it was bitten by one of the cats that tried to escape. His had was so swollen he couldn't use it at all but again how many times do you hear of cats hurting children? Though I don't have facts on it I am willing to bet just as many if not more children are hurt via scratches and bites by cats then they are by dogs. I will agree I haven't heard of many cats killing children but I have seen a few cats that probably wished they could.
There is a lot surrounding animals that makes them 'dangerous' and it isn't always their breed! My old dog Patch was my baby. I got him at four months old and we rescued him. He was a border collie cross, was found at a station in wales. That was all the information we were given. We took him home and he was puppy like, chewed everything, playful, everything you would expect, until we got his brush out and then he turned, just like that. The same happened with the hoover, diesel landrovers, and other random things. We soon pieced together a story of the first four months of his life. He was a farm dog, we knew that pretty quick along with his fear of diesel landrovers - and it was only diesel ones! We also guessed he had been beaten from how he cowered and snarled if you got the brush out. He also didn't like loud noises. It took years to get him settled with us properly so that he didn't cower all the time, we let him meet other dogs and socalised him like you would a normal puppy. As he grew he suddenly attacked another dog, a female puppy. This was completely out of the blue but he got out the house, ran over the road and attacked her. I will not believe till this day that it was completely unprovoked but something changed in him that day and he would attack any dog that came near him. We did socalise him with my boyfriends dog in the end but any other dogs, he would still go for them and on occasions he would go for people. He did it because he was afraid, something in those first four months ruined a lot of his life however he lived his life till he was 14. Why am I saying all this because if you look at it, he was a badly behaved dog. We didn't muzzle him when we took him out because I knew what to expect and explained to other owners to keep their dogs away - of course there are always the reckless owners that are like 'oh but my dog loves dogs' and completely ignores you when you say that yours doesn't. Generally though Patch was a safe dog when I had him but he would turn and he would turn badly. He was really when you look back a dog that would have been seized if he had looked different.
Isn't it stupid when you think about it? That granted my dog was under control, I knew him well enough to know if he was going to attack but actually in someone else's hands he could have been a dangerous dog but it would have taken longer for him to be picked up, if he were ever picked up because he was obviously a collie. In fact it's known that collies can be aggressive because of their energy and if they aren't given enough enrichment or are treated badly they can pick up aggressive traits quite quickly but how many do you hear of mauling kids? How many labs do hear about killing kids? Did you know most dog bites in the home are from labs? Those big soppy dogs are heavy and strong and are still dogs. The whole legislation is stupid and maybe it is needed that someone will just light a small fire under the MP's seats so they can get a move on with passing a new law to change the stupid one we have!
Also maybe one day someone in the media will realise what dogs are and that actually no matter what the breed they can attack and it will be presented that way. Instead of hearing "boy mauled by Staffordshire bull terrier" or a recent one around here was "baby killed by pet Akita". Maybe the media could do a tv program on children and pets. Make people realise that leaving your child alone with your dog is asking for trouble, in fact leaving a young child and any pet could mean that your child ends up seriously hurt. There are some lessons people need to learn and the media could do so much but instead it likes those juicy stories and oh how it loves to help spread fear. A kent newspaper recently had a 'ship a dog' campaign to help get rid of illegal or dangerous dogs. The whole article was about staffordshire bull terriers. Maybe they should have just watched the video below.
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