Dog Attacks: When Will We Learn?

 
Dogs are one of the most dangerous things you can bring into your home, a fact brutally illustrated by the tragic death of a mother-of-five yesterday.

A family pet killed Cassandra Smith, 49, in front of her children as she desperately tried to fight it off. The tragedy came as police began a manslaughter probe into the death of an 83-year-old man who died in hospital following a dog attack.

These deaths are the most current illustration of a growing problem in Britain. Dog attacks shot up by 5% last year, with 6,120 hospital admissions from May 2010 to April 2011 compared to 5,810 the previous year.

Shockingly, one in six of these patients were children and it is understood that a significant proportion of the kids were brought in with facial injuries.There were several truly horrifying pictures in newspapers last year, showing children with gaping wounds which would leave them scarred for life.

Yet still millions of families insist on keeping dogs, despite warnings from the Royal Society For The Prevention Of Accidents that dogs should “never be left alone with children”. I cannot understand for the life of me why a responsible parent living in anything but a farm in the middle of nowhere can possibly countenance keeping a dog, knowing the risk they pose to their children or other people.

Consider the treatment meted out to even the best treated of urban pets. When I left for university, my Mum bought a little Scottie dog called Snowy. Although it wasn’t mistreated as such, and had a garden to run around in and a dog-flap to use when we were out, it didn’t have the most stimulating of lives.

Save the odd walk, where it got to snarl at a few other dogs and sniff a couple of lampposts, the highlight of its day was running around in figures-of-eight on the lawn.

Again, it didn’t necessarily have an unhappy life, just a rather restricted one – hence the nicknames we gave it, like Papillion, Terry Waite or The Dog In The Iron Mask. Just imagine how this benign torture would affect a larger, more vicious dog, and then consider that many dogs are treated far, far worse.

What sort of a life does a violent teenage boy give his pet, which he keeps by his side more as a weapon than a companion? It’s little wonder these animals have been dubbed ‘devil dogs’ by the tabloids.

It is always said that dogs are 'man’s best friend', that they have been with us since time immemorial and society without them would be somehow bereft. But people used to think nothing of owning swords, and now that most of us don’t, few miss them one little bit.

The government is already considering implanting microchips into dogs to encourage responsible ownership – but this doesn’t go far enough. It’s time to look again at who can keep dogs and why.