BULL TERRIER SEIZURES THE MYTHS CONTINUE  

BY AMITS

Although the recent death of the 5 year old toddler Ellie Lawrenson in Merseyside is a tragedy for her family, it still remains a mystery as to how a young child found herself alone with an unsupervised dog and what happened to make the animal turn on the girl. Neither do we know the history of the Bull Terrier itself and the sort of treatment it had received at the hands of its owner. The very fact that this individual had been warned about the behaviour of his dog by the local authorities is perhaps significant and suggests a problem with him as an owner, as much as it does about the dog itself.

The introduction and implementation of the Dangerous Dogs Act by the Tories in 1991 did little more than to create a demand for what later became highly illegal and much sought after dogs. The media’s description of a highly combative and athletic canine simply fed a latent demand for these supposedly exotic and rare Pit Bull Terriers, a demand which was quickly met by any number of unscrupulous breeders, who were keen to make a fast buck out of the situation.

The much fan fared and highly publicized Bull Terrier seizures undertaken by the Merseyside Police force appear to represent a clear over-reaction to recent events, rather than an informed and balanced proactive approach to any illegal activities which may or may not be taking place within their force area. The very fact that the Police themselves have video-taped these recent raids and then made the pictures available to both regional and national news services, suggests that the real purpose of their actions is to try and convince the public of a growing menace to their safety and of the Police’s ability to deal with it.

These raids were reported to be as a result of information received from members of the general public who were concerned about the presence of the dogs in their neighbourhood. It obviously did not occur to the Police that the information might have been provided by a malicious individual whose prime motivation was driven by a neighbourhood dispute, rather than any sort of public spirited altruism.  

Had the fate of the seized dogs not been fairly inevitable, with their facing a possible death sentence, the whole scene might have been laughable. Here we have a number of highly dangerous dogs that are supposedly used for dog fighting, being handled by unprotected officers and sitting side by side in the back of a van. There were no obvious signs of the dogs being aggressive, either to the people bundling them into the vehicle, or to the other dogs and for the large part they appeared to be extremely passive animals, which would be strange behaviour for a fighting dog.

What was equally alarming about these raids was the unquestioning acceptance of the facts by the media who accepted the assertion that the animals seized were Pit Bull Terriers and did not take the opportunity to question or test these allegations. The BBC, along with the other news providers should be duty bound to test any such statements and offer the viewer an alternative argument to the case being presented, something that they singularly failed to do in this particular instance. 

It was also apparent, that a number of these so-called American Pit Bulls appeared to be nothing more than Blue Irish Staffordshire Bull Terriers, a canine hybrid which is unique to the UK. These dogs are a mixture of two other breeds, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier and the English Bull Terrier, both of which are native to this country and both legally recognised and legitimately owned.

These Blue Irish Stafford’s are renowned for their athleticism and more importantly for their reliability towards people. Thought to have first appeared in the UK more than 20 years ago, the breed has been extensively refined and developed to produce one of the healthiest and psychologically sound dogs in the country.

Within the dog fighting fraternity, these Blue Bull Terriers are regarded as a joke, simply because they lack both the physical ability and the combative temperament to compete within such an arduous environment. There are no serious dog men within mainland Britain that would use such dogs for any illegal activities, as they would represent a complete waste of time and money for them.

More than 99.9% of these Blue dogs are bred exclusively for the pet market and to my knowledge have been bought as such by families throughout the country, people who have never had cause to regret their purchase. Unlike their Kennel Club counterparts, these dogs do rarely suffer from inherited diseases and are fairly robust animals which regularly live to 14, 15 or even 16 years old.

Their natural athleticism creates a demand for regular exercise and this can often involve walking the dog several miles a day. Given the time and effort that would be involved with such long walks it is little surprise that some people look for alternative methods to keep their dogs fit. Despite the assertions of the RSPCA and Merseyside Police, treadmills can be and are used for the legitimate exercising of family dogs and are not simply torture devices which are employed by dog fighting criminals. When used correctly and appropriately treadmills can provide any family pet with the proper level of daily exercise in a controlled environment and in a fraction of the time that a 10 mile walk might take. It seems ridiculous to suggest that a form of exercise which is regularly used by people is in some way cruel or inappropriate for a much loved family pet. It is also worth pointing out that such mills tend are not cheap to buy and that not all dogs will use them, so the idea that all fighting dogs are trained in this fashion is a complete nonsense.    

The very idea that there is any sort of new or emerging threat from illegally owned American Pit Bull Terriers is of course a complete fallacy. Having been involved with the UK Bull Terrier scene for a number of years, both as an owner of an Irish Staffordshire Bull Terrier and as the former editor of a Bull Terrier magazine, I have found the very opposite to be true. There is no widespread availability to such dogs in the UK, simply because the numbers no longer exist within mainland Britain and the few dogs that are sold, tend to be extremely expensive and therefore highly prized by their owners. Anyone who has paid thousands of pounds for a dog is highly unlikely to misuse or abuse it, as that would obviously represent a complete waste of money.

Regardless of each person’s individual attitude towards the practice of fighting dogs there is one particular certainty which is fundamental to the activity. In almost all cases any dog that has a propensity to bite its handler will be culled immediately and is highly unlikely to be bred from. This is because the dog has to be handled during a match and no-one in their right mind is going to put his hands on a dog that is liable to bite, it tends to hurt too much. So the idea that such dogs are vicious towards people is a complete fiction and is yet another untruth which has been inexorably tied into the Pit Bull legend.  

Another mistake of which the media is guilty is to inadvertently promote the anti-personnel attributes of the Pit Bull and driving unsuitable owners to purchase Bull Terriers as guardian breeds, a role they were never bred to serve. Today, as in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s the dogs are regularly being bought to guard properties and premises and are even being taught to undertake man-work, a task they were never meant to adopt and for which they are totally unsuitable. To teach a people friendly animal to be anti-social and aggressive towards men is criminal, given that other specialist guarding breeds exist to fulfil that particular role.

Bull Terrier breeds which are not represented by the Kennel Club tend to be easy targets for the British media when a tragedy occurs. Despite its worldwide recognition as a native breed, the American Pit Bull Terrier has found itself vilified and outlawed throughout most of Europe often on the most spurious evidence, but often at the behest and encouragement of a modern media that is known for not letting the truth get in the way of a good story.

We are also told that particular dogs can be easily identified as Pit Bull “types” by DNA testing and through the use of “experts” who can determine a dog’s heritage and type just by looking at it. The Pit Bull’s history is said to find its roots in our own native Bull Terrier breeds, such as the early Staffordshire Bull Terrier and English Bull Terrier, both of which were exported to the United States more than a hundred years ago. Assuming this common heritage exists it would be highly questionable whether a distinct and entirely separate gene pool could be easily identified for the Pit Bull as an individual breed.

There are currently thought to be dozens of different Pit Bull bloodlines around the world, a large number of which have found their way to Britain in the past 30 years. In common with our native Bull Terriers they too come in all shapes, sizes and colours and can be hard to distinguish from one another. Yet we are told there are people who can differentiate between the breeds, simply by looking at the dogs overall construction, its colour or its size.

Even if the individual dog was being compared to a formal breed standard, as authorised by a Breed Council or the Kennel Club, it would still not be conclusive evidence to support a dog’s heritage or type. There are numerous legally recognised Kennel Club dogs which fall outside of the established breed standard and could easily be identified as Pit Bull types and therefore become the subject of a destruction order which will end their lives.

American Pit Bull Terrier “experts” are as rare as hen’s teeth and most that have experience of the breed will admit to not knowing all there is to know. What this tends to suggest is that the system which is currently employed is wholly unsuitable and far too susceptible to the vagaries of individual interpretations and or opinions. The very fact that an individual dog can be condemned by the opinion of a so called “expert”, who often has little experience of the breed itself, remains a source of great injustice within the English system and should have been addressed by government earlier.         

As long as the UK media and animal welfare charities continue to offer the British public a highly distorted, hypocritical and quite frankly sensationalist approach to the subject of dog attacks, then we can expect little to change or to be achieved. Current legislation has singularly failed to prevent the sort of tragedy which occurred in Merseyside, because society continues to blame the dog and not the owner. Instead of banning and criminalizing specific breeds of dog and attempting to eradicate them through the use of national legislation, it would be far more effective to make owners criminally liable for the actions of their animals and forcing them to pay the price for their own poor ownership.

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