The Home Secretary is seeking advice after footage emerged of an XL Bully/ Staffordshire Bull Terrier puppy attacking an 11-year-old girl.
American Bully XL dogs have been linked with several attacks in recent months, including one near Wrexham in north Wales, in which 22 pregnant sheep were killed.
Earlier this year, a 37-year-old man died after being attacked by his friend’s dog, allegedly an XL Bully. If the ban is brought in, the XL Bully will become the fifth breed to be banned.
However, dog behaviourists and other canine experts insist it’s not as simple as banning a breed because the “XL Bully” technically isn’t a breed. The XL Bully started appearing in the early 90s as breeders maintained a demand for more extensive and stronger bull terrier-type dogs.
Dog behaviourist Debbie Connolly said, “This type of dog does not have a specific DNA marker, making them difficult to ban. It is not recognised as a breed in this country, and therefore, you cannot simply write the words’ XL bully’ at the end of the current dangerous dogs list.”
If a police officer suspects a dog may be a terrier, it is seized and compared to the American Dog Breeder Association Standard.
“There are 60-odd points of what a pit bull terrier should look like,”
The dog is measured and proportioned; how much more significant is its head than its chest? What does its tail look like? And subjective things like springy gait. So it is compared, and the police decide whether that dog has a substantial number of the characteristics of a pit bull terrier.
Another expert tracking the rise in attacks by XL Bullys said the dog is “uniquely dangerous.” Dr. Lawrence Newport said of his findings, “I don’t blame the dogs any more than I blame a pointer for pointing at stuff; it is just what they were meant to do.”
The law lecturer explains how the dogs had been bred for fighting and repeatedly inbred over 30 years: “You can have a huge great Dane, 80kg, but you can’t find a single example of one that has killed anyone in the UK. “It is not about size, it is not about jaw strength, it is about breeding and what the dog has been bred to do.”
“In one week in July this year, there was one dog killed every day by an American bully,” says Dr Lawrence. “They were ripped to shreds and others given injuries they can never really recover from.”
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has waded into the debate, proclaiming action against dangerous dogs needs to be much stronger.
As a nation of dog lovers, we can see both sides of the nature versus nurture debate. However, people instinctively know there is a disproportionate risk when facing off with a giant dog with a bull and a terrier in their breed.
Parents will, by and large, allow their children to pet a random Labrador in the street but will, rightly, stiffen up and become far more cautious when certain types of big “Dug” enter the scene.
Given the risks involved here, by which I mean the risks to life, it’s sad to see so much debate around banning this specific dog. If the XL Bully isn’t recognised as a breed, cast the net wider and ban the breed that the XL Bully is most likely to be a part of.
Okay, so some people won’t get to own a specific type of dog because it is “unfairly” banned so that Bull Terrier types are kept off our shores. There are plenty of other dog breeds for people to own that won’t maul a child.
Of course, the usual “defenders” come forward when a story like this goes big. “I’ve owned an XL Bully for three years, and she wouldn’t hurt a fly,” etc. Quite frankly, as a nation and a society, we shouldn’t care about the example of the individual. We should look at the bigger picture of how these things affect the fabric of society.
If these dogs have a reputation for violence, and the stats prove it, who cares if you can show one good one? It’s not relevant. You can have all the good examples in the world, but we know these things attack kids randomly; the good examples don’t change this.
People also compare XL Bully attacks to bites from Chihuahuas, as if it’s even remotely similar.
And it’s not like these dogs can be tamed; it’s in their DNA to act like this. They can’t change. They just are. It’s not their fault; however, that doesn’t mean people should have to live in fear of them just because they’re hardwired to rip a human’s ear off rather than choosing such an action.
Long story short, these dogs are dangerous. They pose a risk to anyone who walks past them, and the cost is already too great for people living here. I think we can all agree one child savaged by one of these dogs is one child too many, especially if there is a way we can isolate the entire breed in a comprehensive, all-encompassing bracket and just ban them.
As I said before, some individual dog owners might miss out, but the benefit to society is more important than a few respective dog owners’ personal preferences. These dogs are no benefit to our community, only a hindrance.
Any sane government would have found a way to control all these dangerous dogs and put people’s safety first. It’s no good destroying the dog after it has harmed someone. The harm is already done. We need common sense rules to protect people from harm; these dogs cannot cause damage.
