Rottweilers are NOT pets

Note (2nd May 2010): Dog lovers, I appreciate the strength of feeling you all have regarding your dogs, their temperaments and the castigation of breeds. Rottweiler can crudely translate to village rout which spells trouble rather than a sense of comfort and sadety.

Our lawmakers made a law banning those dogs and I am just reflecting the public outcry about dog-owners who train their dogs to be aggressive maulers or have allowed a naturally aggressive streak to arise in them - whilst rottweilers might be cuddly and lovable, you don't hear of anyone training a poodle to be aggressive, it just does not have the look and the fiercesomeness that is required even though there might be accidents.

I am taking no more comments on this blog, if you feel so strongly about your dogs, go and write about them somewhere else, more so, I wonder if some of the commenters really should have those dogs if their comments end up on other blog topics – cool-headedness no matter the outrage about views you have read can help one write an encouraging opinion about rottweilers.

So far, I am sorry to say, a majority of the comments have not persuaded me that the dogs are friendly or the owners are able to manage those dogs with a sense of societal and communal responsibility.

Pet kills child

I am saddened to read again that a child has been mauled to death by what is purportedly a family pet – the dog.

I have seen many a menacing dog, built like a brick house and almost as ugly as the owner who is straining on a lead where it is more or less the dog taking the human for a forced walk.

There have been too many instances of little children being caught in the jaws of dogs that are naturally wild, vicious fighting animals and as the case of Michael Vick in the States shows, these dogs have to be treated badly with menace, cruelty and brutality to take on the nasty fearful reputation we all know of these dogs.

Act to get them all

I remember the introduction of the Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991 which came amidst the media frenzy after the mauling to death of a little girl, after that, we have seen pictures of people who have survived attacks and many more children mauled.

There were four breeds identified in the Act the Pit Bull Terrier, Japanese Tosa, Dogo Argentino and Fila Brasileiro. I have seen the pit bull terrier too many times in public, un-muzzled and ready to pounce – there are times I have thought sighting one was an emergency enough to alert the police.

There is many ways in which I feel this law has not been properly enforced and where it has, the penalties for infringement are not strict enough.

Many countries have banned the breeding of this dog, but one clear breed that should have had specific mention is the rottweiler, it was noted as the number two breed responsible for human fatalities between 1979 and 1998.

They are NOT pets

A pet rottweiler is responsible for the recent tragedy where a one-year old has met so horrific a death due to the irresponsible actions of family and relations.

Why anyone would want to keep such dogs amazes me and no doubt many are caught in the hubris that their dog is so well trained that it should pose no danger to children. The fact is, these dogs are wild and vicious, they are animals regardless of time they have spent in the company of human-beings.

One can say that the breed of dog is not the problem because naturally such dogs should not be domesticated; they have their roles in policing and maybe as guard dogs but not as cuddly pets.

Bringing such dogs into the close confines of a family setting sets off a lot of unintended situations and since the size of a child is hardly bigger than that of a dog, a shake around like a rag-doll is likely and once it has tasted blood you cannot be prepared for the worst that would definitely happen.

Literally a year ago, a bigger girl of five as mauled to death by her uncle’s rottweiler, she was in the care of her grandmother and though the case went to court the greater sentence would have been living with the fact that she was responsible for the horrific death of her grand-daughter.

Keep the dogs out of homes

But, we should not have to be regaled with such terrible tales of loss of life or mangled limbs – these dogs have no place in our communities as pets, like I said, they have their functions but they should be controlled just like arms.

They should be handled only by professionals in a service industry and taken completely out of homes – we cannot predict if any of these dogs would stay tame or go wild and there is no reason to run the risk of finding out and learning to great horror.