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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Vets asked to put pit bulls to sleep

by

20120420

Lo­cal vet Dr Mark Adam says just a week af­ter the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to en­force the Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act, he and sev­er­al col­leagues have been asked to eu­thanise pit bull ter­ri­ers. Adam says he has re­fused all re­quests so far to put the dogs to sleep since he be­lieves it is too ear­ly for ac­tion.

"I told my clients that they should hold off un­til it's of­fi­cial...I don't think it's jus­ti­fied to eu­thanise a healthy dog," he said. The act will take ef­fect on Au­gust 1, and will put nu­mer­ous re­stric­tions on the own­ers of pit bull ter­ri­ers, Fi­la Brasilero and Japan­ese Tosa.

Adam was in favour of reg­u­la­tion but con­cerned about its di­rec­tion. He feels the fee for dog li­cences is too steep and that the manda­to­ry spay­ing and neu­ter­ing stip­u­lat­ed in the act will make the list­ed breeds ex­tinct in T&T with­in ten years. Si­ta Ku­ruvil­la, pres­i­dent of the So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA), says there is no way to de­ter­mine the size of the lo­cal pit bull pop­u­la­tion, which some es­ti­mates put at 500,000.

Ku­ruvil­la's or­gan­i­sa­tion has re­ceived nu­mer­ous eu­thana­sia in­quiries in the past week. As the own­er of two pit bull dogs, T&T Guardian colum­nist Deb­bie Ja­cob said she is will­ing to com­ply with all the act's reg­u­la­tions, al­though she finds it mis­guid­ed.

"As a re­spon­si­ble own­er of two pit bulls, I whole­heart­ed­ly agree that ir­re­spon­si­ble and abu­sive dog own­ers who pur­pose­ly turn their dogs vi­o­lent need to be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions," she said. "What Gov­ern­ment needs to crack down on are those peo­ple who en­gage in ag­gres­sion train­ing."

Ja­cob de­scribed her dogs as "lov­ing" and "friend­ly," and said any breed of dog can be harm­ful if trained to be ag­gres­sive. Adam said pit bulls' jaws have stronger grips than oth­er breeds, which is why they are mis­tak­en­ly thought to be more dan­ger­ous. "Anatom­i­cal­ly speak­ing, once a pit bull bites, it's al­most im­pos­si­ble for it to let go," he said.

"Pits can in­flict more dam­age, due to their make­up. But any dog can do harm if ag­gra­vat­ed." Tim Lum Kin, a cer­ti­fied dog trad­er, breed­er and han­dler, says the act will hurt the dog trad­ing/breed­ing econ­o­my, in which pit bulls are in high de­mand. He be­lieves that the 500,000 dog es­ti­mate is close to ac­cu­rate.

He said: "The pit bull is the biggest breed in the coun­try. Two-thirds of the dogs in each house­hold are pits, sim­ply be­cause peo­ple are in­to the breed for pro­tec­tion." Kathryn Cleghorn, pres­i­dent of the an­i­mal rights NGO An­i­mals Alive, an or­gan­i­sa­tion found­ed in 2008, takes in 25 stray dogs a week at its sanc­tu­ary in Oropouche.

Cleghorn says they have re­ceived on av­er­age about ten "dumped" pit bulls a year as a re­sult of the act. Ku­ruvil­la said the TTSP­CA has on­ly re­ceived two aban­doned pit bulls since the Cab­i­net an­nounce­ment.


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