Post by michele5611 on Mar 27, 2013 8:24:31 GMT -5
blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100209277/girl-killed-by-dogs-almost-any-breed-can-kill-but-good-nurture-can-beat-dangerous-nature/
The tragic death of Jade Anderson is bound to raise questions about how we regulate the ownership of dogs. The 14-year old was visiting a friend’s home in Wigan when five dogs went into a frenzy and mauled her to death. According to early reports, the breeds involved were bull mastiffs and Staffordshire bull terriers – dogs commonly associated with these kinds of attacks. The mastiff is a huge animal bred for bringing down wild boars, is highly territorial and, if provoked, will fight to the bitter end. The Staffordshire is smaller but potentially no less difficult; it was bred for dogfighting. Given the regularity with which these varieties go wild, it’s understandable that politicians and activists will call for wider controls on their breeding. But I’d like to offer a few words of caution.
First, it’s important to note that just because a dog is labelled as a legal breed doesn’t necessarily mean that it matches that standard – often dodgy breeders will mix banned and legal varieties or pass off a banned one as legal simply by renaming it. Pit bull terriers are probably routinely rebranded as Staffies and buyers don’t necessarily realise what they’re getting. Second, training is everything, and bad or non-existent training can turn a basically docile dog into a dangerous one. The mastiff is not a good dog to have around children, but it is essentially loyal and loving. The Staffie, by contrast, is really a darling by nature. These slappable, huggable balls of energy love people and desperately want to please – and it’s precisely their adaptability that allows them to be manipulated by bad people into becoming fighting dogs.
The point about training is crucial. People have to understand that all dogs operate by a mix of nature and nurture – and the nurture has to be right to tame their essentially wild nature. That point is underscored by both the alarming commonality of dog attacks (roughly 210,000 incidents every year) and the surprising identity of the breeds most often involved. Staffies and mastiffs don’t even make the top ten most dangerous dogs list – but St Bernards and chow-chows do. I suspect that even those statistics are misleading, because they relate to hospital admissions. In my own experience as the son of a kennel owner, smaller breeds attack more often but do less damage and so don’t make the headlines. Personally, I’d advise people with children to avoid terriers of almost any variety, no matter how cute, because their size breeds vulnerability and anxiety that can easily lead to snapping. I’d also warn against presuming that labradors are big lumps of love. One tore off half of my mother’s hand when she intervened in a dog fight – cornered and afraid, I’d rank them as one of the most deadly breeds of all.
What matters more than the breed of a dog is the quality of its owners. Of course, dogs can turn randomly wild and it may have nothing to do with their training and plenty to do with bad genes – we have no idea yet of what went wrong in the case of poor Jade Anderson. But it remains a sad fact that most of the "dangerous dogs" headlines involve owners who are either overwhelmed or purposefully encouraging aggressive behavior. I’m unaware of there being any statistics on the incidence of castration, but I’d bet my house that the vast majority of these animals are also “whole” males. There isn’t wide enough understanding of the importance of keeping dogs’ hormones in check.
There is a case for shaking up and expanding the Dangerous Dogs Act, which, bizarrely, doesn’t cover attacks on private land. But I would argue against outlawing more breeds, and in favour of better enforcement of laws against the ones that are already illegal – including making public examples of people who mistreat and mistrain their pets. But most importantly, we need a campaign of public education. Thousands of dogs are bought too lightly by people with little understanding of the responsibility involved. A dog requires love, yes, but also discipline – not just for your sake but its own. Dogs are animals, not children, and they hunger for structure and authority. If both are exerted, almost any breed can serve as man’s best friend.
The tragic death of Jade Anderson is bound to raise questions about how we regulate the ownership of dogs. The 14-year old was visiting a friend’s home in Wigan when five dogs went into a frenzy and mauled her to death. According to early reports, the breeds involved were bull mastiffs and Staffordshire bull terriers – dogs commonly associated with these kinds of attacks. The mastiff is a huge animal bred for bringing down wild boars, is highly territorial and, if provoked, will fight to the bitter end. The Staffordshire is smaller but potentially no less difficult; it was bred for dogfighting. Given the regularity with which these varieties go wild, it’s understandable that politicians and activists will call for wider controls on their breeding. But I’d like to offer a few words of caution.
First, it’s important to note that just because a dog is labelled as a legal breed doesn’t necessarily mean that it matches that standard – often dodgy breeders will mix banned and legal varieties or pass off a banned one as legal simply by renaming it. Pit bull terriers are probably routinely rebranded as Staffies and buyers don’t necessarily realise what they’re getting. Second, training is everything, and bad or non-existent training can turn a basically docile dog into a dangerous one. The mastiff is not a good dog to have around children, but it is essentially loyal and loving. The Staffie, by contrast, is really a darling by nature. These slappable, huggable balls of energy love people and desperately want to please – and it’s precisely their adaptability that allows them to be manipulated by bad people into becoming fighting dogs.
The point about training is crucial. People have to understand that all dogs operate by a mix of nature and nurture – and the nurture has to be right to tame their essentially wild nature. That point is underscored by both the alarming commonality of dog attacks (roughly 210,000 incidents every year) and the surprising identity of the breeds most often involved. Staffies and mastiffs don’t even make the top ten most dangerous dogs list – but St Bernards and chow-chows do. I suspect that even those statistics are misleading, because they relate to hospital admissions. In my own experience as the son of a kennel owner, smaller breeds attack more often but do less damage and so don’t make the headlines. Personally, I’d advise people with children to avoid terriers of almost any variety, no matter how cute, because their size breeds vulnerability and anxiety that can easily lead to snapping. I’d also warn against presuming that labradors are big lumps of love. One tore off half of my mother’s hand when she intervened in a dog fight – cornered and afraid, I’d rank them as one of the most deadly breeds of all.
What matters more than the breed of a dog is the quality of its owners. Of course, dogs can turn randomly wild and it may have nothing to do with their training and plenty to do with bad genes – we have no idea yet of what went wrong in the case of poor Jade Anderson. But it remains a sad fact that most of the "dangerous dogs" headlines involve owners who are either overwhelmed or purposefully encouraging aggressive behavior. I’m unaware of there being any statistics on the incidence of castration, but I’d bet my house that the vast majority of these animals are also “whole” males. There isn’t wide enough understanding of the importance of keeping dogs’ hormones in check.
There is a case for shaking up and expanding the Dangerous Dogs Act, which, bizarrely, doesn’t cover attacks on private land. But I would argue against outlawing more breeds, and in favour of better enforcement of laws against the ones that are already illegal – including making public examples of people who mistreat and mistrain their pets. But most importantly, we need a campaign of public education. Thousands of dogs are bought too lightly by people with little understanding of the responsibility involved. A dog requires love, yes, but also discipline – not just for your sake but its own. Dogs are animals, not children, and they hunger for structure and authority. If both are exerted, almost any breed can serve as man’s best friend.