Sascha Wil­son

The Fed­er­a­tion For Ca­nine Reg­is­tra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go says harsh penal­ties are need­ed for ir­re­spon­si­ble dog own­ers. The non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­so call­ing for com­pre­hen­sive leg­is­la­tion and pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion on the han­dling and se­cur­ing of dogs.In a state­ment on Thurs­day, the group wished four-year-old Ezekiel Renne-Cam­bridge, who was mauled by two dogs on Tues­day, a speedy re­cov­ery.The or­gan­i­sa­tion said the child may have been a vic­tim of "ir­re­spon­si­ble own­er­ship of the dogs."The fed­er­a­tion's pres­i­dent, Kurt Ajod­ha, stat­ed: "We know that in many in­stances sur­vivors of such at­tacks suf­fer psy­cho­log­i­cal side ef­fects as well. Most peo­ple keep dogs for se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es and there can be no ar­gu­ment with that.

"How­ev­er, own­ing and keep­ing such dogs car­ry with it a se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that the premis­es in which they are kept is se­cure," he said."From all re­ports, Ezekiel may have been a vic­tim of ir­re­spon­si­ble own­er­ship of the dogs in ques­tion since some re­ports sug­gest that the dogs have been able to run freely in the street on past oc­ca­sions.""The on­ly time a dog may cause un­nec­es­sary harm is when you have care­less own­ers and lack of ed­u­ca­tion. The fact is dogs are used by the po­lice and in mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions and by se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to do es­sen­tial­ly the same thing that they do in the yard of the own­er."

He called for harsh penal­ties for ir­re­spon­si­ble dog own­ers.He said the leg­is­la­tion should not be breed spe­cif­ic, since the breed of the dogs which at­tacked Ezekiel is not list­ed as a dan­ger­ous dog in ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion.The or­gan­i­sa­tion rec­om­mend­ed pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion on the prop­er han­dling, car­ing, se­cur­ing and pub­lic dis­play of dogs.The group al­so rec­om­mend­ed that all dogs be reg­is­tered with the or­gan­i­sa­tion since its sys­tem us­es mi­crochip iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and DNA pro­fil­ing, en­abling them to work with reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies and au­thor­i­ties to prop­er­ly iden­ti­fy dogs and own­ers in cas­es of neg­li­gence.