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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Stakeholders on Dog Control Bill: Difficult law to legislate on

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20140223

Vet­eri­nar­i­an Dr Az­izul Ra­haman says the Dog Con­trol Bill will be dif­fi­cult to im­ple­ment as 70 to 80 per cent of pothounds or "com­mon dogs" now have pit­bull in their gene pool.

He was speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view af­ter dog own­ers raised con­cerns over sev­er­al amend­ments to the bill.

One ma­jor is­sue was that the court can em­pow­er po­lice or a lo­cal au­thor­i­ty to seize an own­er's dog from their pri­vate prop­er­ty and de­stroy it once it is deemed a dan­ger­ous an­i­mal.

Ra­haman said, "If they de­cide that dog is one of the Class A dogs, and the law pro­vides for them to seize the dog with a prop­er search war­rant, when the mat­ter goes to court that's a dif­fer­ent mat­ter.

"I don't know who are the ex­perts that are go­ing to stand up in court and iden­ti­fy the par­tic­u­lar breed and take it straight to the Privy Coun­cil, be­cause you have to have sci­en­tif­ic fact. Since the pit­bull is gen­er­al­ly a cross-breed dog and with­out de­fin­i­tive DNA (de­oxyri­bonu­cle­ic acid) test­ing, it's not a clear-cut case at all.

"Com­pound­ing the mat­ter, right now about 70 or 80 per cent of all the pothounds or mon­grel dogs in the coun­try have pit­bull genes in them."

Ra­haman, the own­er of Jones An­i­mal Clin­ic at La Sei­va Road, Mar­aval, said while the $50,000 fine for vet­eri­nar­i­ans cer­ti­fy­ing the in­cor­rect breed and be­ing held li­able for fraud was re­moved from the amend­ed bill, there were many vet­eri­nar­i­ans like him who chose to err on the side of cau­tion and not write a dog's breed on its reg­is­tra­tion card when it was brought in for treat­ment.

He said vet­eri­nar­i­ans would al­so be hard­pressed to iden­ti­fy un­fa­mil­iar breeds of dogs en­ter­ing the coun­try, such as the Black Russ­ian Ter­ri­er, as about 20 dif­fer­ent breeds went in­to its de­vel­op­ment or the Ti­betan Mas­tiff–much less po­lice of­fi­cers or court of­fi­cials.

He said the lo­gis­tics for hous­ing, feed­ing and care of the seized an­i­mals out of a pop­u­la­tion of over 100,000 dogs for court ex­hibits al­so had to be con­sid­ered.

Ra­haman said the cas­es could al­so take years to be heard in court as they wouldn't be giv­en pri­or­i­ty over mur­der cas­es. He ad­vo­cat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment look at a non-breed sys­tem such as what the US is adopt­ing.

Train­ing, DNA tests need­ed

An­i­mal be­hav­iourist Kris­tel-Marie Ram­nath said there were 103 breeds with­in the Moloss­er or pit­bull-type fam­i­ly, and while some, such as the Amer­i­can Pit Bull Ter­ri­er and Stafford­shire Ter­ri­er, can be in­stant­ly recog­nised, oth­ers could not be so eas­i­ly de­ter­mined.

She said al­though most vet­eri­nar­i­ans can look at a dog and sur­mise it was a pit bull-type or had been bred from a pit bull-type dog, breed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion based on phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance is not a course of­fered in the vet­eri­nary cur­ricu­lum in T&T and most of them would have dif­fi­cul­ty stat­ing which of the 103 breeds the dog was.

Ram­nath said this would not nec­es­sar­i­ly be a prob­lem, but for the pur­pos­es of leg­is­la­tion and cer­ti­fy­ing which dogs must be reg­is­tered, the vet­eri­nar­i­an would have to be cer­tain of the breed.

She said vet­eri­nar­i­ans were hes­i­tant to cer­ti­fy the breeds be­cause they risked be­ing held ac­count­able for in­cor­rect­ly cer­ti­fy­ing a dog.

Ram­nath said, "At this point in time I doubt the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties and po­lice would know how to vi­su­al­ly iden­ti­fy a Class A dog out of a whole line-up of large pit­bull-type dogs, but I'm as­sum­ing that the Gov­ern­ment is an­tic­i­pat­ing this even­tu­al­i­ty and will put train­ing for breed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion on the list of things to do be­fore the act is pro­claimed."

She said the spe­cif­ic breed may on­ly be­come an is­sue if a dog bites or kills some­one and the case goes to court, in which case DNA analy­sis will have to be done to prove or dis­prove the breed.

Dogs the last de­fence

Man­ag­er of Get-A-Pet sup­ply store in Barataria, Good­wille Theodore, said guard dogs were an ef­fec­tive de­ter­rent to ban­dits and they were in high de­mand be­cause of the preva­lence of crime in the so­ci­ety.

He said his house and those of his oth­er familty mem­bers which were guard­ed by pit­bulls and Rot­tweil­ers, were the on­ly homes not bro­ken in­to in the neigh­bour­hood. There were many dog own­ers with the same mind­set in the coun­try, he said, judg­ing by the large vol­ume of dog food he sold.

He said, "Dogs are the last de­fence. Every­body is go­ing to be afraid that some­thing is go­ing to hap­pen to them and every­body wants pro­tec­tion. You're not get­ting ad­e­quate pro­tec­tion from the po­lice, so you have to get pro­tec­tion for your­self, you're not get­ting gun li­cences and dogs are the on­ly le­gal form of pro­tec­tion."

Theodore said more con­sul­ta­tions and in­put from stake­hold­ers and dog own­ers were need­ed to go in­to the bill.


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