The Daily Mail Article (Wolverhampton Attack)
Dog owners may be interested in seeing an item printed in today's (Weds May
22nd) edition of The Daily Mail. Anyone wishing to comment on this flagrant
ignorance can contact the Daily Mail at either andy.simpson@dailymail.co.uk or
letters@dailymail.co.uk.
As usual, please do not be rude and please be sensitive to the fact that a young
child has been needlessly injured by dogs. My own response is shown below but I
urge you to write and put your own personal view of this type of "journalism".
David Levy
(Presumably an irresponsible idiot)
Linda Lee-Potter's article
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"FIVE-YEAR-OLD Leah Preston lies in Birmingham Children's Hospital. Part of her
body was eaten by bull terriers belonging to a next-door neighbour. They are
dangerous, vicious animals and it's time they are banned. Irresponsible idiots
should no longer be allowed to keep savage, lethal beasts in private homes on
suburban Streets"
My reply
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Sir
I understand that you are reviewing responses to an article published in today's
Daily Mail (Linda Lee-Potter column) which has caused great distress to many dog
owners. It also unfortunately perpetuates a discredited argument that continues
to increase the risk to the public from the rare incidents of severe dog
attacks.
I believe that there is a significant threat posed to the public by a continuing
degrading of a complex problem to the simplistic categorisation of "breeds". I
urge you to consider this argument and hopefully join the vast body of
scientific evidence, both in the UK and across the world, that points to the
behaviour of owners and breeders of dogs as being the primary cause of serious
dog attacks rather than breed involved.
- The public deserves a higher quality of debate in order to ensure proper
protection based on the education of owners.
- We need a more productive response to the rare occasions of dog attacks than
to merely kill the animals without any research being carried out to determine
the cause or triggers for such attacks.
- We most essentially need an informed media to serve it's primary purpose of
informing the public by ensuring that proven facts are set before them rather
than reactionary rabble rousing.
Clearly the greatest victim of the attack in Wolverhampton is a 5 year-old girl
potentially disfigured and certainly traumatised by a vicious attack. If we are
to prevent repeated recurrences of such incidents we have two choices. We can
either ban ALL dogs (ignoring the many scientifically proven health, social and
educational benefits of such pet ownership to the lonely, elderly and children)
or we can instigate informed research to determine just how the misbehaviour of
humans leads to such attacks and legislate to prevent such actions.
Leah Preston deserves to grow up knowing that her pain has at least resulted in
changes that will prevent her own children from suffering similar traumas.
Yours sincerely
David Levy