Make dog owners responsible

2011-08-19 07:37

A small child was killed by a pit bull-cross in Australia this week. Georgina Guedes believes that owners should be punishable for the vicious actions of their dogs.

I read with all the horror of a soon-to-be mother of two and a fellow human about the killing of a four-year-old girl by a pit bull-cross in Melbourne. Her family was apparently playing in their garden when a neighbour’s escaped dog entered the property, attacked them and ultimately killed the small child.

Stories like this always raise the same old debates about whether it’s acceptable to keep vicious dogs. In news reports about this particular case, the head of a breeding society in Melbourne said that there are vicious dogs, not vicious breeds – but it certainly does seem that there are breeds that make these kinds of headlines more often.

In fact, I was unsure if there had ever been a case of, for instance, a Labrador killing a child, so I did an internet search, and there certainly has been, but not as frequent as other, high-risk breeds.

Of course, the frequency of the attacks by one breed or another can be put down to the conditions in which the dog has been raised. In general, however nice pit bills might be if they are loved, they’re the breed of dog that is more frequently owned by people that want protection, and are probably raised to be vicious. That said, I do believe that there is a tendency in certain breeds to snap – figuratively and literally – and people should be aware of that.

I knew someone whose child had been mauled by a large dog and needed reconstructive surgery. It was a family dog and no one had ever believed it capable of what it did. But, the mother said to me, once it had happened, she looked on large dogs in an entirely new way.

“They’re bigger than our children,” she said. “When something goes wrong, they could realistically kill a child. It’s an unacceptable risk.”

Unfortunately this line of reasoning is the same that would have us never leave home in case we have a car accident, or never swim because of the high risk of drowning. The world is full of perils, and we have to choose at what point avoiding risks come into conflict with us living our lives.

In the case of the Melbourne killing, the little girl was playing in her own garden. She should have been safe. I do believe that it is the responsibility of a dog owner to keep a potentially vicious dog well supervised and enclosed – and in this case that clearly didn’t happen.

So, while Australians are calling for the banning of certain dog breeds, I agree with the slightly more moderate approach that sees owners being heavily penalised for any dog’s misbehavior – especially if that dog did come from a so-called “vicious” breed.

- Georgina Guedes is a freelance writer. You can follow @georginaguedes on Twitter.

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