After two recent tragic events in Britain, when a toddler and a baby got mauled to death by family dogs, there's more talk about extending a list of dangerous, banned breeds in UK and about tightening the legislation and hunting down and euthanising all such dogs that roam UK streets.
Is this really the right thing to do? Every year many family pets are seized and destroyed simply because they look like pitbulls. There are petitions on this website with desperate appeals for people's support to stop authorities from killing a dog that's never done anything wrong and has been trained properly.
I believe that it's not the breeds that should be persecuted when tragedies like this happen, it is also wrong to scare the public with headlines such as 'Dog ate my baby's head' that cause all dogs to be perceived as dangerous. Each of these dogs had an owner and it's the owner who failed on some level by trusting an animal to behave on a level that they simply don't understand. It's humans whose actions, or lack of them, lead to such tragedies.
So, next time you hear someone talk, see someone post or tweet or blog about, for example, getting rid of their dog because it is the same breed as one of the 'killer dogs' that they showed on tv and will surely attack the children at some point, or about a need to put alaskan malamutes on a banned breed list after the latest tragedy, or about aggresive breeds of dogs everyone should be scared of - share the information you have or find yourself, like in the links below, about more balanced point of view and ideas on how to manage dogs' behaviour and how to control dogs' ownership without making it overly controlled. Educating owners and future owners of dogs about the ways to avoid potentially dangerous situations is the only way forward.
Sign to show support, spread the word, share the links. Thank you.
An article by a dog behaviourist
And another one, on leaving children alone with dogs
Here's one about proposed legislation that would put focus on owners' accountability
