Soldato
- Joined
- 11 Sep 2013
- Posts
- 12,491
Firstly, the issue has been made more complex by the Covid lockdown, and the isolation mentality that has led to the similar surge in general dog ownership, as well as people not taking the time to get proper training for both themselves and the dog.
It's basically the 'dog for Christmas' issue that we used to have, and which led to so many ending up in rescue centres.
This may abate somewhat in a couple of years, especially if there's a focussed effort to get people taking proper responsibility. Theoretically, XLBs should make for pretty decent and wel-behaved dogs, but only in the hands of a sensible and responsible owner and under a good trainer.
Secondly, as with all the previous kill-stats but even more so in this instance, the contexts of and the conditions in which each KSI incident occurred are a big factor.
For example, a lot of the dead victims are children. Children are more likely to die from an attack anyway, particularly those not old enough to be walking and talking... but as the details in various articles and reports show, a great many of those incidents would never have even occurred if the dogs' owners had not done something monumentally stupid.
The exact same can be said of many different breeds, all of which can (and in some cases did) kill people when their owners have done something stupid.
I concur, this would be a sensible approach, but only if you could very tightly police the unregistered breeding and that will take a LOT of effort.
Outright bans just make things more attractive to the criminal element.
This is one reason why so many associated professionals advise against it.
Making things mandatory like insurance, licencing and so on would only work if they were universally dirt-cheap and, unlike previous implementations, were more than just coffer-fillers for local government. Otherwise you'll just get too many people ignoring it, and you'll still be faced with lacking enough law enforcement checking and enforcing it. I also expect that, as with pet medical insurance, many people would find that companies had shafted them in the small print, leading to a large discontinuance.
Microchipping costs £15, but can even be had for free, which is why it has been mostly successful... The authorities do need a better and wider supply of portable scanners, though, to help further this success.
