Mar­tin George

The sad sce­nario of four-year-old Ezekiel Re­nee Cam­bridge who was mauled by two dogs this week and had to be rushed to hos­pi­tal for emer­gency surgery brings to the fore again our lack­adaisi­cal and lack­lus­tre ap­proach to pro­claim­ing and im­ple­ment­ing laws in our land. From re­ports, the child's back and ab­domen were ripped out as he was knocked to the ground by the dogs in their fren­zy. What ap­pears from the news re­ports is that the dogs were able to es­cape from their yard and pro­ceed up­on this vi­cious at­tack, some nine months af­ter an­oth­er at­tack had been made on an­oth­er young boy by one of these very dogs.

How could the own­er of these dogs, in cir­cum­stances such as those, not re­alise the prob­lem posed by the un­re­strained, un­muz­zled pres­ence of these dogs out on the streets? Would it not have been in­cum­bent on this own­er, af­ter the first at­tack, less than a year ago, to en­sure that these dogs were prop­er­ly and se­cure­ly con­tained with­in her yard and that they not be al­lowed on­to the streets with­out muz­zles and leads? By all ac­counts it ap­pears that she is send­ing the dogs away nine months too late, since she says that she is now send­ing them off to live on a ranch in Pe­nal. So, in­stead of deal­ing with the is­sue, it ap­pears that the prob­lem is be­ing moved to Pe­nal. Heav­en help them if there are any lit­tle chil­dren liv­ing near­by in Pe­nal.While we are all for per­sons hav­ing their pets, to whom they may be the sweet­est and most lov­ing and gen­tle an­i­mals, if these "pets" have a propen­si­ty to at­tack and maul oth­er hu­man be­ings then it be­comes a se­ri­ous so­ci­etal prob­lem.

In the Unit­ed King­dom, af­ter a spate of at­tacks on per­sons by Rot­tweil­ers and Pit­bull Ter­ri­ers, they in­tro­duced leg­is­la­tion in 1991 which formed the ba­sis of their Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act 1991. This Act was lat­er amend­ed in 1997 but the gist of it was to name four types of dogs be­ing the Pit­bull Ter­ri­er; Japan­ese Tosa; Do­go Ar­genti­no and Fi­la Brasileiro. This is more than we have in our Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act which lim­its it to three of the four by leav­ing out the Do­go Ar­genti­no. An­oth­er area in which the UK leg­is­la­tion dif­fers from ours is the fact that their leg­is­la­tion con­tem­plates and cov­ers cross breeds of the above four types of dogs and they thus cat­e­gorise their Dan­ger­ous dogs by types and not by breed. This means that whether a dog is pro­hib­it­ed un­der the Act in the UK will de­pend on a judge­ment about its phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics and whether they match the de­scrip­tion of a pro­hib­it­ed type as as­sessed by the Court through ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed to it.

This is a more prac­ti­cal ap­proach than the rigid­i­ty of our Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act No 32 of 2000 which by Sec­tion 3 there­of, lim­its the de­f­i­n­i­tion of "dan­ger­ous dog" to mean, a dog or bitch of the type list­ed in the Sched­ule and it lists the three as above and omits the Do­go Ar­genti­no. Now while this is an­oth­er dif­fer­ence, the most fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence be­tween the UK Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act 1991 and our Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act 2000 is that their leg­is­la­tion is in force and ac­tive­ly used while ours lies dor­mant, un­pro­claimed and un­used. So there is ab­solute­ly no ba­sis for ac­tive com­par­i­son be­tween the two types of leg­is­la­tion be­cause while one is ac­tive­ly pa­trolling and guard­ing the con­duct of own­ers in the UK, ours re­mains a tooth­less bull­dog, that is not even a "bad in yard" as is said in the lo­cal par­lance.

Procla­ma­tion is­sues aside, we have to con­sid­er just how ef­fec­tive this leg­is­la­tion would be even if pro­claimed. The UK ex­pe­ri­ence has shown that there have been sev­er­al chal­lenges with the ap­pli­ca­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of of­fend­ers un­der their leg­is­la­tion. There have been com­plaints about the ex­tra strict­ness of the leg­is­la­tion which leads to re­sults at times which the pub­lic found to be un­fair. The most fa­mous and high pro­file of these was the case of the Pit­bull Ter­ri­er, Dempsey. In this case Dempsey was be­ing tak­en out for a walk with his muz­zle on and start­ed act­ing up like he was ill. His muz­zle was re­moved so as to al­low him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vom­it and an ob­ser­vant po­lice of­fi­cer saw the un­muz­zled Dempsey and im­me­di­ate­ly pressed charges.

Three months lat­er, the Court made an Or­der for Dempsey to be eu­thanised un­der the law and put to sleep. The own­er ap­pealed and then the en­tire case be­gan to spin out of con­trol with an­i­mal rights ac­tivists and pro­test­ers on both sides of the di­vide voic­ing their opin­ions. Film stars got in­volved too, with some of­fer­ing a home for Dempsey out­side of the UK so as to have the dog es­cape the sen­tence of death which hung over its head. The case went all the way through the Ap­peals process and was even­tu­al­ly won by the own­er on a le­gal tech­ni­cal­i­ty, but the point is that their laws are so strict that just for hav­ing a muz­zle off, this dog was or­dered to be killed. It hadn't at­tacked any­body, it hadn't threat­ened any­body, yet here in T&T we con­tin­ue to fid­dle while Rome burns.Maybe the fid­dlers should change their tune and get per­mis­sion from Anslem Dou­glas to play for us his mon­ster hit, Who Let the Dogs Out?