Another Knee-jerk Reaction

Anther knee-jerk reaction The stupidity of the decision to ban the XL Bully knows no bounds. Yet again, the government ignore the weight of peer-reviewed science just as they did with Covid-19, and prioritise a populist response. Nothing to do with pending by-elections and a general election of course.

Once German Shepherds were demonised and the Staffie was the Nanny Dog and then they were demonised and became the media’s”devil dogs”. Now it is another bull breed derivative.

It seems the government is not prepared to learn the lessons from listing the so-called pit bull and we will have yet more perfectly fine dogs confined to leads and muzzles for no good reason and worse – owners will be obliged to neuter so that we will effectively be reducing the pool of dogs with good temperaments. More so-called expert witnesses will be polishing their callipers ready to measure those massive heads – how many millimetres over their limit does a bully have to be to be condemned even if it has done nothing?

There is a serious problem and that has led to so many injuries and fatalities this year but it is far more complex than sticking a type of dog on a list. Whether it’s a large dog confined to a council flat or a dog walker unable to cope with too many dogs, the problem lies with breeding, purchase and ownership.

This was a missed opportunity to improve the legislation regarding breeding and responsible ownership, a missed opportunity to support behaviourists and trainers who are trying to deal with the consequences and a missed opportunity to save lives.

XL bullies are already being dumped and now will probably be culled as, once the legislation is enacted, it will be illegal to exchange or sell them. Responsible owners will be demonised and, right now, I am thinking of the delightful XL Bully bitch that my puppy was romping with last week. She was well-trained and well cared for and, despite being three times the size and weight of my puppy had perfect play manners.

Rishi Sunak might like to consider that his own chosen breed, the Labrador is a restricted breed in Ukraine and they feature high on the list of dogs causing injury in the UK. Of course, the Labrador has excellent PR – puppies rolling around with lavatory paper, Guide Dogs; but anyone that has been on the receiving end of an aroused Labrador may have a different view, as might the person who like me, had a whale of a time playing with an XL Bully.

Bully Off

Bully Off It has been an appalling year already for serious injuries and fatalities involving dogs.

The Met alone seized 479 out-of-control dogs under the Dangerous Dogs Act in 2022 146 more than in 2021. 154 dogs had already been seized by May this year.

44 of the seizures were XL bullies, compared to 16 Staffie crosses. No American bulldogs were seized in 2018 or 2019 by the force. In the UK overall in 2022, there were nearly 22,000 cases of out-of-control dogs causing injury. In 2018, there were just over 16,000, the UK’s dog population having been estimated to have risen by only 15% in the same period of time.

The reasons for the rise in incidents are complex, but include poor breeding and rearing, poor handling and ignorance of owners plus the minority who deliberately want their dogs to be perceived as intimidating.

There is a push for XL bullies to be added to the list of banned breeds but this would not solve the problem. In fact, yet more legislation will do little but to enable the police and other agencies to deal with the “low hanging fruit” unless considerable resources are committed to back up the legislation that we already have and which is rarely enforced. This would go a long way to preventing back street breeding, illegal boarding and out of control dogs.

Dogs have always been used to exemplify the perceived status of their owners – and that applies as much to the Labrador and spaniel (“my other house is an estate”) as to the XL Bully (be scared of my dog, be scared of me). Demonising whatever the latest fad is in dog breeding ignores the elephant in the room that all dogs have the potential to be dangerous in the wrong hands and under the wrong circumstances.

Research proves that BSL has failed everywhere it has been tried: research and statistics prove that the Dangerous Dogs Act has been an abject failure. Let’s not allow MPs to tick a box, add a breed and then think that their job is done. It won’t save lives.

(Not) Licensed To Kill

Dog boarding agency Every owner needs help with looking after their dog sometimes but how many bother to check the credentials of their sitter?

It is a legal requirement for anyone boarding a dog in England and Wales to have been inspected and licensed by their local authority.

Many people use pet sitting agencies in the mistaken assumption that they will get a competent, trustworthy and accredited service.

Such a false belief within a largely unregulated industry led to the death of a puppy  when a sitter ignored the instructions of the owners and walked the dog in her garden and then left him in a conservatory in some of the hottest temperatures that the UK has experienced. The dog had been left briefly on a trial basis before the owners went on holiday abroad.

The agency, Rover.com, is an international brand with a background check on employees that doesn’t even mention competencies for working with animals. Do you want to know that your dog sitter is not on the sex offender register or would you rather know that they have at least enough ability to understand that a young, brachycephalic dog is especially prone to heat stress during an unprecedented heatwave? The background check is no more than anyone can do themselves for a small fee but does not include checking whether the sitter is boarding legally within their jurisdiction.

The case is currently under investigation by the police but Rover.com just promised to “remove the sitter” from their platform and not allow them to take any more bookings.

It can seem too much hassle to run a check via your local authority for boarders but it could result in your dog dying. The legislation is there for a reason but it is obvious that these get-rich-quick companies make empty promises about checks and you cannot assume that your dog will be safe.

The happy smiling images of the staff on Rover.com’s website say nothing about their competencies. If you look at the careers that they offer, it is clear that they are basically a software platform taking advantage of the fact that too many people think that dog sitting is a sinecure that simply requires them to like dogs – and maybe not even that.

Surely no holiday is worth your dog’s life?

The final bitter irony – if you look closely at the screenshot of Rover.com’s homepage, you will see that they donate £1 to the RSPCA for every new customer.

 

Hitting Them In The Pocket

Appeals to the public not to buy puppies from puppy farmers and back street breeders are useless. The “click and collect” mentality has permitted the canine supply chain as attested by the increase in dog ownership over lockdown .

There is a genuine problem in the dog breeding world as many legitimate breeders are ageing or cannot afford to just break even by selling surplus dogs at little ore than cost. This can only get worse as the cost of feed, utilities and transport rockets.

However, something needs to be done as poorly bred and ill-socialised dogs become a social problem as well as a welfare one.

It seems that the HMRC may provide the solution (in addition perhaps to Brexit making the illegal import of dogs harder).

HMRC have launched a hotline for anonymous reporting of illegal breeding and other canine and feline-related activities.

It may well prove that being hit in the pocket is the ultimate solution.

Bully For Them

An Oslo court has ruled that breeding English bulldogs and Cavalier King Charles spaniels contravenes their animal welfare legislation and is thus now illegal.

On the surface, this might seem like a good move but why stop there? The list of dogs that have poor genetic diversity never mind those that are severely compromised by their distorted phenotypes goes far beyond those two breeds. Should we ban breeding of all such dogs? What about out crossing such as that which eliminated kidney problems in Dalmatians? It is possibly too late for the bulldog but are we willing to make the breed extinct deliberately? Is the bull dog the canary in the coal mine? If so, that bird has been singing in the void for many other breeds for some time now.

We also need to look at where the Oslo legislation is coming from – an “animal rights” organisation. At their extreme, such movements argue that companion animals are “prisoners” and that farmed animals should become extinct in the drive to turn omnivorous humans into herbivores. Indeed, some even try to force dogs and cats to eat meat-free diets. There is also a push to recognise animal sentience in law, again on the surface, a reasonable demand until one looks into it a little more deeply. The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill currently progressing through the English parliament, much heralded by self-appointed groups such as the continually unsuccessful litigants Wild Justice is a thinly veiled attack on field sports and farming that will not only do nothing to protect animals but will, like the politically-motivated Hunting Act 2004 is likely to lead to much suffering and imbalance of wildlife in the town and countryside as well as prohibiting essential countryside stewardship such as controlled burning.

It is already illegal to breed dogs with a compromised phenotype under the AWA 2006, 6(5). It is already illegal to breed and sell dogs for profit without being licensed. There is a complete lack of resources provided to police this legislation and the public remain largely ignorant of the law.

It remains to be seen what the effect of this legislation will be in pratice in Norway but it may be a case of “be careful what you wish for”.

Tip Of The Iceberg

Tip of the iceberg Would you pay £20,000 for a dog that could barely walk, couldn’t breathe properly, could never give birth naturally and was high likely to suffer from a variety of diseases including severe skin problems?

Plenty did. Enough to net Karl and Victoria Shellard £372,531 and provide them with assets of more than £1m.

The Shellards bred 67 litters over six years, with bitched being inseminated at every season and one bitch being forced to produce 6 litters in just 4 years.

They were fined £19,000 and ordered to pay back illegal earnings of £372,531 and costs of £43,775. That will still leave them pretty well off – and their main crime being considered to be not having a breeding licence.

Judge David Wynn Morgan assuredly missed the point when he told them “You could have run an extremely profitable business if you were properly registered…”

Just look at their dogs in the image here: animals so severely contorted that their shortened lives will be misery even without being forced to breed. Under The Animal Welfare (Breeding of Dogs) (Wales) Regulations 2014 , Condition 3: Health, “The licence holder must take all reasonable steps to protect dogs from pain, suffering, injury and disease.” Well that would rule out the dogs that the Shellards were producing for a start.

Tragically for dogs, the Shellards are the tip of the iceberg and until people stop paying obscene amounts for distorted travesties of dogs, the majority will go unpunished and dogs will yet again suffer.

Need It Like A Hole In The Head

The UKKC lists the following defects as being a problem in the Chihuahua:

  • Incorrect dentition
  • Wry jaw
  • Retained puppy teeth
  • Misplaced teeth
  • Protruding tongue as a result of incorrect teeth
  • Missing teeth
  • Incorrect bites
  • Excessively short muzzles.

You could select any one of those and feel that the poor dog would need it like a hole in the head, but that is exactly what has been added to the litany of defects for the poor Chihuahuas: holes in the head.

Our colleagues at Pedigree Dogs Exposed have alerted us to a new paper which highlights the prevalence of persistent fontanelles – holes along the suture lines of the skull that expose the encased brain. Fontanelles are normal soft spots that enable growth and birth, but that should close between 9 and 12 weeks of age.

The failure of this process is common in small dogs, especially where breeders have deliberately created domed heads and smaller and smaller dogs. Some breeders have even made a fetish of an open fontanelle in the middle of the head (designated as a molera) and supposedly designating the “purity” of the breed.

This latest finding and earlier research by the same authors shows that as many as 90% of Chihuahuas suffer from holes in the skull: the smaller the dog, the larger the hole and the larger the amount of brain area exposed. There is also an association with syringomyelia and ventriculomegaly.

The simple solution is to breed bigger dogs without domed heads and short narrow muzzles. The difficulty is in persuading the breeders and show judges – the very people who purport to uphold the best in the breed – to agree and comply.

Lucy’s Loophole

Lucy's Law posterThe so-called Lucy’s Law which banned the third party sale of puppies and kittens in pet shops from April 6th, 2020 was greeted with some scepticism by canine professionals as being unlikely to have much impact on puppy farming.

The dubious sale of puppies and kittens had already largely been via websites and social media and now it seems that the puppy farmers have found a loophole enabling them to shift their animals via pet shops anyway.

A 2019 amendment to the 2018 Regulations permitted breeders to sell puppies under a pet sales licence instead of a breeders licence if a dog was bred “overseas” and thus not under the jurisdiction of English welfare legislation. DEFRA stated that this was to ensure compliance with European Union Directives and World Trade Organisation rules.

Private Eye magazine has highlighted the continuing problem of puppy farming in the six counties of Ireland and in Eire where thousands of puppy farmed dogs are being shipped to England for sale in premises owned by the very same puppy farmers who have managed to obtain 5 star ratings as licensed breeders in their English premises.

Business as usual – unless of course the source of the problem is dealt with, namely the people who buy these dogs in the first place.

Don’t Ignore The Snore

Distressed pug In a world where some people try to designate truth as “fake news”, perhaps it shouldn’t be so shocking that some people are also unable to distinguish severe distress in dogs for “cuteness”. Then again, it’s imperative that it is shocking otherwise we can neither uphold evidence-based factual reporting or make the world better for dogs.

Just as an anorexic needs to adjust there distorted perception to realise that their image in a mirror is not, in fact, obese, owners of brachycephalic dogs need to realise that dogs that can barely survive a night of (greatly disturbed) sleep are not struggling purely for the perverse entertainment of humans.

Pedigree Dogs Exposed has again highlighted the plight of these poor dogs with their Don’t Ignore The Snore campaign and a terrific video.

This video is distressing (I hope). It’s meant to be. It is of course the struggling dogs that I find distressing, but perhaps if people see humans in a similar condition it may, just may, trigger them to get their dogs treated and best of all, to stop buying them in the first place.

Can You Help The Royal Veterinary College?

Dog for sale Sales of dogs have gone through the roof during lockdown with many owners buying on impulse with little or no research. The demand for “off the shelf” dogs means that most are inevitably bred illegally and with little or no regard to welfare.

The Royal Veterinary College are undertaking a study into “pandemic puppies”.

If you purchased a puppy in 2019 or 2020, please help the RVC researchers by completing their survey and help them to improve canine welfare.