I AM forever reading about people and animals being chased, attacked and killed by ‘dangerous dogs’, the latest being a seven stone Rottweiler which was shoved out of a car in Porthcawl in South Wales and chased a terrified man who was forced to scale a chain-link fence to escape serious injury.

Only last year a 14-year-old girl was mauled to death by two Mastiffs and two Staffordshire Bull Terriers.

The dogs had been kept constantly indoors in a house and were never seen being walked or let out.

The owner only received a six-week suspended jail sentence through lack of evidence.

Despite there being a change to the Dangerous Dogs Act in 2014, the situation doesn’t seemed to have improved.

Section 3 of the Act applies to every single dog owner in England and Wales. Under this section, it is a criminal offence for the person in charge of the dog to allow it to be ‘dangerously out of control’ in a public place. A dog doesn’t have to bite to be deemed dangerous in the eyes of the law and generally if a dog bites a person, it will be presumed to have been ‘dangerously out of control’.

However, even if the dog does not bite, but gives the person grounds to feel that the dog may injure them, the law still applies.

Not many dog owners are aware of this, and I see many of these type of dogs running loose in my local park, even though the owners often claim that ‘he/she wouldn’t hurt a fly’.

Despite many of these types of dogs being generally placid, they have the potential to cause injury, so I feel that the only answer would be for owners to be made to fit a muzzle to their dog before entering public places, as this would then ensure no person or animal would be injured or killed, the dog wouldn’t have to be destroyed and the owners would escape a hefty fine and a possible custodial sentence.

STUART BUGGINS
Watermill Way
Headington, Oxford