In fact, at the time of this being written, we don’t actually know how he died.
What we do know is that he was walking his dog, his dog of 10 years that he’d had from a puppy, he collapsed and the dog pulled at him enough to cause serious injuries.
Maybe the dog killed him by pulling at his body. Maybe whatever it was that caused him to collapse killed him. We don’t know.
But let’s deal, today at least, in what we do know.
We do know that the incidents of dogs - whatever their breed - suddenly deciding to attack and kill their owners out of nowhere, is, to say the least, very rare.
We do know that Britain (and other countries) seems to thrive on a good ‘devil dog’ story. We do know which are the breeds that have ‘earned’ that tag.
We do know the current wearer of that name is the Rottweiler. We do know the man who died at the start of a week was a Rottweiler owner. We do know that his dog did not just launch into a fatal attack on him ‘out of nowhere’. We do know that some reporting of his death has completely neglected to give the full picture.
We do know that people are influenced by what they read and hear.
We do know that people are prone to panic and make knee jerk decisions based on nothing more than hype and hot air.
We do know that people are abandoning Rottweilers in growing numbers.
We do know that when another, irresponsible, panicking, dog owner goes knee jerking all the way to the forest to dump their litter of Rottweilers and their mother who was found dead by RSPCA officers, that certain members of the media should accept their rampant, non fact based demonisation of a particular dog breed is in no small part responsible for this
Please, if you’re going to directly contribute to people making irresponsible, knee jerk decisions, don’t then weep about animal welfare issues when it suits you to do so.
We won’t overcome the problem of irresponsible owners and subsequently stop dog attacks by apportioning the blame in the wrong direction. Devil dog hype might sell papers, it doesn’t stop dog attacks and does nothing for animal welfare. It’s not part of the solution, in fact it’s part of the problem. Go here, stop dog attacks. ____________ Natalie and Co xxx
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