Yeah, what she said

Every now and again something comes along that must merely be shared, with little comment, because it speaks for itself.  This is one such case.

The following is a letter sent by Susan Bell of the National Dog Warden Association (UK) to Lord Kenneth Baker who blamed Dog Wardens for not implementing the Dangerous Dogs Act properly as the cause for all of the recent attacks they've had in the UK.  Her is her open letter to Lord Baker as it appeared in K9 Magazine:

- Letter from the National Dog Warden Association to Lord Baker -

"The ability of some individuals and organisations to re-write history still absolutely amazes me!

I do not need to re-write history to know that from the outset in 1989/90, through documents I myself wrote, that the National Dog Warden Association presented to government the concept of punishing the deed not the breed. It would have also allowed for the introduction of pre-emptive measures (control orders) where there was evidence that a dogs owner by act or omission was failing to provide appropriate control.

At the time however, the RSPCA, Dr Roger Mugford, Home Secretary Kenneth Baker (now Lord Baker) et al provided us with the Dangerous Dogs Act, and now they are publicly blaming dog wardens for failing to implement that legislation fully and properly?

They appear to have forgotten, I have not, that the incidents in 1989 which led to that Act began with the death of a child (Kelly Lynch) attributable to two Rottweillers. Conveniently that was overlooked in the legislation and instead two non-fatal incidents (Rucksana Khan and Frank Tempest) enabled the transfer of attention to an American breed, the Pit Bull Terrier, a ‘breed’ predominantly present in this country through a very few imports and otherwise through a lot of look alike cross-breeding.

Of the other three ‘breeds’ they named in section one only one at that time had a limited number of specimens in the UK (the Japanese Tosa) the other two were merely known by continental reputation and canine mythology.

A lot came down to opinion rather than fact and eventually many of those originally involved in its creation backed away from the Act and openly criticised it (e.g. the RSPCA) leaving local authorities and the police to implement highly flawed legislation. In this period some of those who brought the Act into being began to appear regularly as defence witnesses (e.g. Dr Roger Mugford) and others arrived on the scene to be hailed as defender of the dog (e.g. Trevor Cooper).

For the working Dog Warden the object in use of any legislation remained the same: the reduction of danger on the streets and the promotion of responsible ownership and control.

During the summer of 2006 a child died after being ‘attacked’ by – two Rottweilers. Although there was some comment at the time the world seemed to have moved on and realised the flaws of the Dangerous Dogs Act, opinion appeared balanced and review of the law was placed on the agenda again.

As in 1989 a few months later another child is killed and this time the incident is laid at the door of a Pit Bull Terrier type. We are told on television that the dog is one of a banned breed it is even suggested that post-mortem this is proven by ‘tests’ (implying DNA tests) despite the fact that no such test has previously been available to decide court cases?

As if to ward off any challenge to these ‘tests’ we are told (by no less than Trevor Cooper) that even its ‘type’ could have ensured its seizure and destruction and we are told, by no less than Lord Baker himself, that had Dog Wardens (not the police or local authorities but, by name, Dog Wardens) implemented the law properly the tragedy would not have happened.

Lord Baker made little reference in his comments to the legal opinion which has so roundly criticised his Act in the intervening fifteen years to the point at which it is thoroughly discredited. Instead he made vague reference to including Rottweillers and Alsatians - not the way the German Shepherd Dog breed is now actually referred to by Lord Baker! - in section one saying they should be muzzled but failing to mention that he chose not to include Rottweillers in section one at the time he introduced the Act despite the death of Kelly Lynch or to mention that section one also requires compulsory neutering, micro chipping and tattooing and an undertaking from the owner to register the dog and not to sell or give away the dog for its lifetime i.e. guarantees the extinction of the breed in the UK within two decades.

What Lord Baker did say yesterday was that the rights of people to own ‘these dogs’ was not worth the life of even one child. So what happened in 1990 Lord Baker? The child that died then was killed by Rottweillers. The ‘breeds’ you did have the political nerve to put into section one were not responsible for any UK fatalities at that time. By your own standards you allowed a child’s death earlier this year by failing to include Rottweillers in section one!

In office Lord Baker understood political expediency, now he can freely make statements to boost his ego and reappraise what has already been determined to be a legal disaster – The Dangerous Dogs Act 1990.

Its failure has nothing to do with Dog Wardens (or even the police) failing to implement it fully or properly. It was bad law. It attempted to transfer responsibility for human failings onto animals by demonising them into killing machines worthy only of total obliteration. It was an important attempt at transferring legal responsibility not only onto an animal involved in an incident but any animal by virtue of its breed alone. It was found out and it failed.

We can continue to blame breeds if we want. If so the Rottweillers should have been named in 1990 and it was criminal negligence by Lord Baker not to do so. Or we can decide to provide legislation which works without using it as an emotional crutch for our own failings.

Children are precious, but hundreds die every year in preventable road accidents with cars and motorcycles (we do not blame the car or the motorcycle or attempt to ban them). Children are precious, but dozens die in accidents in the home with electricity, at play near water and at the hands of human beings who have been put in charge of them either as parent or carer. Why is it that we look differently at the law when the cause of the terrible loss of a precious child is a dog?

Understanding is not increased by eliminating animals from life, after all, the most dangerous animal to a child is the human animal (look to your figures for child murder last year and compare them with the children killed by dogs).

Over the past couple of days I have seen so much ill-considered or ill-conceived comment in the media my head is bursting. I saw figures quoted suggesting 30,000 dog bites treated at hospitals in the last year, but the last time I checked these figures hospitals listed all types of bite as ‘bites’ and did not differentiate between dog and humans bites even though emergency departments confirmed that most of the bites they were treating were of human origin.

It sometimes appears that the only thing we have learned to do better in the last decade and a half is re-write history, but still continue to make all the same mistakes.

So it is with complete despair that I commit these words to the page but also with the complete knowledge that there is no blood on my hands nor on the hands of my many friends who operate Dog Warden Services throughout the UK."

Comments

[Ethan Rehman]

There are a lot of people who treat their pets as a part of the family. They consider pets as more of a person than an animal. There have been cases when pro-animal rights people raised problems about animals being maltreated by other people.