would like to know what you all think of this,
http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/9263660.News_Shopper_launches_campaign_against_dangerous_dogs/

Some of the comments underneath are beyond belief !!
Someone has posted that all dogs should have to wear a muzzle when outdoors, whether in public or on the owners property and it should be illegal for a dog to be with you when answering your door without having a muzzle on ????
I find myself lost for words :(

I do agree with a lot of the comments and it is a difficult situation to find a solution for. Staffies should not be singled out, but to wait until any dog has bitten is leaving it too late. No point in saying that large dogs should be muzzled as in my experience a lot of the tiny dogs are far nastier. I have been bitten 3 times. Once by a neighbour's BC, who knew me extremely well but used to guard the gate to stop people leaving and I got careless one day. The other 2 were a corgi and a chihuahua and they were totally unprovoked.

Obviously the true answer is owner education as virtually all these problems are caused by the owner. But in the real world this isn't going to happen :(

I've just been reading the "what we want" bit at the end of the article and am amazed to see that they want to force all SBT's to be muzzled in public. They are not the only breed dog that have attacked humans before so why should it be just them that are muzzled. IMO, alot (not all) of dog attacks are down to human negligence anyway. I remember reading about a 2yr old girl that was mauled by a JR and a Rottie (cant remember if she survived or not)and in the interview the girls mother had said " I only left her in the yard with the dogs for 10 minutes while I answered the phone, I heard her scream and when I ran out the dogs were on top of her". Why the h@ll was the little girl or the dogs put in this situation in the first place? I have 4 dogs and 2 toddlers and when the kids are not in bed the dogs are in a different room from them, we have the garden sectioned off so both the dogs and the kids can enjoy being outside at the same time. I think my dogs are very placid but would not like to think what they would do if they had a toddler poking them in the eye or hitting them or pulling there tail.

Another thing that really annoys me is when kids are allowed to walk dogs on their own. We have a family round the corner from us who own 2 rather lively dogs, 1 GSD and 1 Ridgie. I often see their 2 kids (no older than 10) walking the dogs around the block with the dogs pulling them into the road to get at other dogs at the other side. If these dogs ever got into a fight and the kids were injured, who would get the blame? The dogs.

Think i've waffled a bit but it sooo bl@@dy annoys me.

Ally x

Someone has posted that all dogs should have to wear a muzzle when outdoors, whether in public or on the owners property and it should be illegal for a dog to be with you when answering your door without having a muzzle on ????
I find myself lost for words

I could think of a fair few people in my area who need this rule brought in for themselves, never mind their dogs! lol

Well come on people, what better incentive does one need; 'you can win a news shopper mug, by sending in a photo of a banned dog'.

It seems to me like a campaign against one breed in particular, NOT just banned / alleged 'dangerous' breeds.
If the so called experts have difficulty in identifying banned breeds, then how on earth does this particular 'news' website expect the GP to know... aah that's right - they don't - they just want photo's and dogs 'shopped'.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a problem in some area's with irresponsible dog ownership, but this most certainly isn't the way to tackle it.

As for the photo featured...

Good grief.

I gave it more time than I should have by even reading it.

Twaddle.

totally agree Ally, i have noticed the same thing , in many cases of children being attacked i to have always found that the owners where to blame, i could reel off the most worse cases, and in reality they where human error, but once it hits the press its always the dog that is blamed,
time to start educating the people but like the first poster here said but that wont happen,

While I agree that this is not the road I would like to see the public go down, I live in the area that this newspaper covers and dog attacks are a very big problem and I can understand why there may be support for this campaign. Sad.

i  live in Peckham shivj which is just as bad if not worse in this area,  i hear what your saying but to target All staffs is wrong, its the owners, its the youths and the idiots who walk with these dogs that need muzzling, my own dog was set upon by a pitbull whos owner thought it a good idea to set his dog on ours while he stood filming the dogs fighting and my hubby struggled to get the dogs apart,
i see it as sadly i live in an area where idiots like this man have these dogs, and do stupid things like this, i however would not wish the nice owner of the staffy across the road from us to have to be forced to muzzle his dog when it is a friendly well cared for well trained dog,
after my experience i do feel the police are now taking a no nonsense approach in these cases where they will take the dog straight away no messing about their,

my hubby works on an estate in peckham where 2 pitbulls got out of their door ran and attacked a ladys staff puppy she grabbed her pup of the floor to protect it and was also savaged by the 2 dogs, these dogs where taken and destroyed, the owner is now on the run leaving his mum to face the court case , i only hope she gets a harsh punishment her dogs or her sons, she was the one responsible for them at the time this happened,

yes it is a shame that it seems we have to wait for an attack before anything gets done about these dogs in the wrong hands, but to force all dogs to be muzzled is not fair on the good well trained dogs out their,

well in saying all that i have been thinking about muzzles for my ebt Ellie lately not because im worried she will bite anyone,,, but she is nick named Ellie the Hoover, for she is always walking nose to the floor gobbling up anything she thinks smells good, and its driving my insane lol, thinks a muzzle may help stop her being able to eat off the floor, :-)

Absolutely, and I hope it doesn't come to that. My dogs have been attacked by staffs and also walk daily with lovely staffs. But I despair when some of the dogs involved in the attacks are dogs that have been rehomed by rescues! Something has gone very badly wrong somewhere!

As I am sure some of you are tired of me saying... easy target again!
Whilst these dogs and their owners are a problem I think they need to get some perspective. How many people are mugged or beaten up or run over in the same time period? Do we therefore ban all people from going out? I read somewhere long ago that statistically a child is more likely to be harmed by a "trusted" adult including family members than a dog.
I suspect somebody at the paper got bitten or knows somebody that did well.
Jeff.
 

I suspect you are right Jeff. But then I guess anyone who has been the victim of a dog attack would feel quite strongly and if you are not a 'dog person' this would seem quite a clever idea and especially so as it is within the law! Hopefully  this won't go any where. I hate to think of a family pet being made an example of. And also, there is far more trouble around my area from other breeds so proving that there is a big people-problem!

> It seems to me like a campaign against one breed in particular

They do seem to be after the staffies :( I hope readers can spot the fact that the article's own statistics show that staffies are not the problem:

"at least 163 people have been injured by dogs in the News Shopper area in the last two years"....

then further on:
"Despite at least five Staffordshire bull terrier attacks in the News Shopper area in the last three years, they are legal and don't need a muzzle in public".

well spotted Ml , i think the comments made toward the end where good, did anyone see this bit,, spot the pit bull,, http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/petbull/findpit.html
Shamed to say i got it SOOOO wrong, choosing 4 others before i went for the right one :-B,
im guessing you lot will do alot better than me ,

No, it took me 4 goes as well. In our defence I must say there were some not very good pictures as well as some breeds  that I had never heard of.

> "at least 163 people have been injured by dogs in the News Shopper area in the last two years"....
>  then further on:
> "Despite at least five Staffordshire bull terrier attacks in the News Shopper area in the last three years, they are legal and don't need a muzzle in public".

Well that's laughable.... What breeds were responsible for the 163 injuries?
[Note it says INJURIES next to the 163, but ATTACKS next to the 5 Staffy incidents].
Clueless, unverifiable ridiculous media scare tactics at its best.
I'd like to see their proof of the 163... where did that come from? Can they verify it? Whose statistics are they?

And best of all, what do they think is an attack? Lots of barking and growling and scaring someone is NOT an attack: it's a dog being a dog, maybe behaving inappropriately, but not an attack.... and well... according to them that happened only 5 times.

Soooooo .......163 people got nipped or bitten by A Dog or Dogs in that area.
5 people got attacked by Staffies.

Mmmm makes you wonder what the 163 non-staffs were doing..... The Staffs were probably stuffing as many balls into their mouths as they could get and running about grinning.... :)

Think it would help if the journalist got the article correct in the first place. Amercian pit bull TYPES are banned not just pits. If you are attacked in someone's home no the DDA does not apply it falls to dogs act of1871.

As for dogs waering muzzles when out willthat apply to private land as I can't see farmers working sheep with muzzled dogs! As if you take this article to the extremes it's headed to that will be the end point as private land is just the same as inside somebody's home.

Playing devils adovocate really but I can understand how peopleare wary of staffies but really the person in charge of the dog we should be worried about. Unfortunately locally to me people have started to suggest that dogs are not allowed off lead in public parks, which is a worry as we already have 9 parks in Manchester where dogs are not allowed off lead. Someone was chased and bitten by a JRT recently after riding her bike through the park,despite signs prohibiting the riding of bikes. Although she should be able to ride her bike and not be interfered with, having all dogs on lead will only cause other issues.

We are looking at the wrong end of the lead yet again. Better way of dealing with it would be to bring in a test that people can take every 12 months and have a licence/certificate saying when they last passed the test. Those who pass can have dogs off lead, those who fail/won't take test can't have dog off lead. Can take test every 4/6 weeks for those who fail after training and lord knows there are enough dog poop patrol officers around here who can police it. They have this type of system in Australia I believe but any system will open to abuse and disception.But worth a shot for those of us who care as we'd pass the test with flying colours.Test level somewhere around the level of good citizens bronze with a little of the silver thrown for car manners so not too difficult.

I'm pretty sure that when a bite victim comes into A&E, who they got a bite from, and the severity aren't recorded in the general statistics, only in the patients private files, so cat/horse/people/dog bites can all be lumped together.
It really is scare mongering at it's worst, a cheap shot to bump up their readership, probably the same sort of publication who will claim immigrants are stealing all our jobs.

Hi CG,

I tried the test and to my relief got it right, but they include other banned breeds (under DDA).

I think this whole thing is really tricky. I've said it before, my biggest bugbear is people walking round the streets with their dogs offlead- I do wish something could be done to stop that. Recently I saw ads round here for Presa Canario/Staff crosses....!!!??? Scary.

Took me 3 times - but isn't an 'old english bulldogge' just another name for a pit?

The Olde English Bulldogge is the less exaggerated version of the regular English Bulldog, but not recognised by the KC.

Oddly enough as much as I find Beverley Cuddy somewhat annoying, with her constant pedigree bashing, she has got all her fans on FB to write to the paper suggesting that a better campaign is education in responsible dog ownership including neutering and spaying. For once I do have to agree with her that responsible dog owners should write to these idiots stirring up anti dog feeling for their own 15 minutes of fame.

Slight update to this, for those interested.

The SBT Breed Council have been in touch with the KC regarding this 'campaign', the KC in turn have been in touch with 'news shopper', so we'll see what happens.