On Central TV tonight the lead story (in front of one about an old man dying following a mugging) was a story about a SBT attack. They had CCTV coverage of this dog (off lead, no owner) running up to another 2 dogs (on leads) and attacking one of them. Thus followed scenes where the owners tried to rescue their dog (out of camera shot) and then a commentary on how awful this was and shots of the owners obviously shaken.

The dog and its missing owner have not been found. The attacked dog has wounds to the neck.

Now, this is very unfortunate, but Central TV ran this as their main story on the 6pm news using lots of emotive language.

Its a scrap between 2 dogs. Anyone else find that completely absurd reporting - and nothing short of hysteria to run it as the main story??!

Well, the SBT's are having a rough month (the pitbull whatever it was) will in most people's eyes be thought of as an SBT aswell. A way of looking at it is that SBT breeding has gone sky high and many of their owners are not suitable to look after a hamster!! So of course we are going to have dogs of bad temperament out there, unfortunatley the breed will suffer from these exposures.

The only plus side is many people have complained of an aggressive dog attacking their on lead dog on a walk perhaps a wide showing of such a future attack will promote a tougher fining or punishment for the owners of a loose aggressive dog/s.

It is totally media hysteria!  My friend is currently awaiting a court case because her gsd had a scrap with a terrier. Terrier ran up to gsd barking, gsd chased terrier. Said terrier was not injured in anyway, but the owner claims that the gsd picked it up by the neck, my friend did not see this, and there are no other witnesses. Strangely enough, two days later the terrier went to the vet and whilst it had no wounds to the neck they said it had bruising around the chest, (which is more consistent with someone kicking the dog, my friend is a vet so knows alot about that sort of thing!) The terrier owner then went on a witch hunt to bring a case to court, stopping people in the street to find out where she lives etc. There really is no case to answer, dogs will be dogs, and she knows to work harder on the training front, but it really was a one off. We all have these little incidents, its the nature of a dog. But it really annoys me how tax payers money is paying for this court case which is completely unneccessary! We have had victims brought into the vets that have needed extensive stitching following a dog attack, and nothing is ever done about that.
There is bound to be a huge backlash from all this anti-dog hysteria, which is bound to affect the average dog owner.

the tax payer shouldnt be paying for it ,if both owner had or did have dog insurance it will come from that as well.when on a dog law semiar in nov A BIG EYE OPEN ON THE SUBJUCT,lot of people have to find lots of money when it comes to dogs  and their owner going to court.

if any of you can go on this semiar about dog laws it is worth the trip or look at www.doglaw.co.uk

so glad i got my dog insured

I'd say its more Media Sensationalism than 'Hysteria'
Media sensationalism leads to Public Hysteria... which is much more unforgivable in my book.

People often look at me as if I'm bonkers when I tell them that the group most at risk from violent crime is 16-24 yr old males, not girls and certainly not old people.  This is why the old man dying from a mugging is making headlines - it is not common.  As for the SBT being seen attacking dogs on CCTV, dogs attacking other dogs is not unusual but catching an attack on CCTV is unusual and as luck would have it (for the media) the dog in question is a SBT.  In light of the Pitbull attack the public's attention to dog attacks is already heightened and the media is just jumping on the bandwagon feeding the emotions of people who are already upset by the little girl's death.  IMO the media often creates news rather than reports it.

As the saying goes "The fear of crime is greater than the risk of crime".

You're 100% correct - 'news' is only NEWS if it's unusual. A person being killed by a dog makes the headlines because (thankfully) it's incredibly rare. Where are the headlines "Child survives evening watching TV whilst family dog sleeps in front of the fire"? Nowhere. Because it happens every evening in thousands of homes. That's the norm, and that's what must be remembered.

Perhaps one or two of the big papers should run that story JG - it might bring home to the public just how absurd all this hype is in the grand scheme of things.

I.M.O it would help if the media actually got there facts right. Whilst whatching a certain satalite news channel on mondays dog attack the video footage of dogs that were used to show what a pitbull looks like were in fact American bulldogs. I believe this was done to get the general public who can not tell the difference between breeds onto a complete BULL BREED witch hunt (jmo)