The government in theUK opted yesterday to rule out a proposal that would force all dog owners to have special insurance for their dogs. The idea for the law was initially proposed to be sure that people who were bitten by dogs were protected so that the dog owners' insurance companies would have to foot the bill for their medical bills.
The reason the new insurance proposal was shot down: "We don't want to penalise the vast majority of responsible dog owners because they're just as concerned as everybody else about the small minority who mistreat dogs, getthem involved in dog fighting or use dogs as weapons," said Environment Secretary Hilary Benn.
"Compulsory insurance is always difficult to enforce," said Nick Starling of the Association of British Insurers. "The very people that the government is targeting -- those who mistreat their dogs or use them as weapons - are the same people who will not buy cover".
The bolded part, is exactly why the current breed ban is failing -- and why the whole Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991, needs to be thrown out, and a new one started from scratch.
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There should be no mistaking -- the Dangerous Dogs Act, an act that bans four different breeds of dogs, has failed. Over the past 12 years, the UK has seen the number of people hospitalized from dog bites grow by 66%. And the number of dangerous dog cases has grown from 35 in 2002 to 719 in 2009. The number of people who were prosecuted under the Dangerous Dogs Act has more than tripled since 1997. Now, 19 years after the Act was passed, the number of people who own dogs of the restricted breeds seems to have grown, not decreased -- causing speculation that the very act of outlawing the dogs made them MORE in demand among the people who shouldn't have them.
Wisely, the country is now, finally, admitting failure and looking at alternatives - and yet, they continue to not learn from the failure of the Dangerous Dogs Act and instead, seem destined to repeat the failure with another ill-advised piece of legislation. This isn't rocket science folks -- it's simple logic. And while all of the peope in charge of changing the law are saying the right things, the solution is somehow, completely escaping them.
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Let's look at the two quotes from earlier:
"We don't want to penalise the vast majority of responsible dog owners because they're just as concerned as everybody else about the small minority who mistreat dogs, get them involved in dog fighting or use dogs as weapons." -- Hilary Benn
"The very people the government is targeting -- those who mistreat their dogs or use them as weapons -- are the same peope who will not buy cover." - Nick Starling
Essentially, they're talking around the issue, and don't appear to quite get it. Here are the three key points -- from their statements -- that are essential to understand to create an effective dangerous dog law:
1) The majority of dog owners are responsible, and it is a small minority of people who are responsible for the majority of the problems.
2) Broad-sweeping ordinances that unduely impact the majority of dog owners who are not causing the problem create a) bitterness and lack of help from the responsible dog owenrs and b) enforcement issues because you now have to enforce the law upon virtually everyone even though the majority of people are not causing the problems. So enforcement resources get spread too thin and the law becomes unenforceable
3) The people who you are creating the law for in the first place, are likely not going to abide by it.
Now if you look at those three things, the answer becomes really very clear:
Focus all of your animal control/police resources on dealing with people who are mistreating dogs, fighting dogs and using them as a weapons and leave everyone else alone. If we assume that those things are illegal anyway - -then just enforce those laws. Don't create new laws that make criminals out of the majority of people who are NOT causing problems. This is where the current Dangerous Dogs Act has gotten into problems in the first place....it has wasted resources trying to deal with 'pit bulls' regardless of whether the dogs are actually problems or not, or whether the owners are a part of the small minority of owners that are causing problems.
Just use all of your resources to target the people who are actually causing problems. If you're not a problem, you're not a problem.
It should be that easy...and for the life of me, I cannot figure out why some governing bodies are having so many problems figuring it out. For the UK, that means scrapping the current Dangerous Dogs Act in its entirety, get rid of the breed specific regulations, and focus on solutions that deal solely with the people who are causing problems -- starting with upped enforcement on dog fighting, using dogs for intimidation and for cruelty. Wasting time and resources on anything else is just more of the same...which is failure.
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