- Marc Ching
By James Mather
Dangerous Dogs Amendment Act 1997 you do have a reasonable chance of avoiding the destruction of your dog if you can show to a Court that the animal is not a danger to the public.
The second is under S3 Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. This section applies to every other dog regardless of its breed or type. This is a criminal offence which can be brought against either the keeper or the person in charge of a dog that is dangerously out of control in a public place. If whilst so out of control your dog injures a person then there is an aggravated offence that can be prosecuted. If an incident takes place in a private place where the dog is not permitted to be then you can be prosecuted under S3 [3] Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. If your dog injures a person then the law requires the Court to presume that it should be destroyed. A destruction order can generally be avoided if you can show that your dog is not a risk to the public.
If an incident takes place in a private place or involves an injury to another animal then the Crown will usually use the Dogs Act 1871. S2 Dogs Act 1871 is merely a complaint to the Magistrates Court and involves a request that the keeper be required to keep the dog under proper control or destroyed. Proceedings can only be brought against the owner of the dog. It is important to note that a single incident is unlikely to be considered sufficient to prove that the dog is dangerous unless the Court accepts that the incident is an exceptional one. A Court is free to order either destruction of the dog or a Control Order or to make no order at all. Destruction orders under S2 Dogs Act 1871 are very rare.
The Act penalises dogs by breed and not deed. This can be viewed by some dog training professionals as absurd because it gives the idea to quite a few that only some dogs are unsafe and others aren’t. In reality any dog can bite and their conduct is far more prone to be influenced by the education or lack thereof which they received from their owners.
The bill is disproportionate and draconian in dynamics. Under this law an individual will go to jail for any period of up to a couple of years if their dog is “dangerously out of control” and attacks someone. The definitions of these terms are absurdly wide.
To demonstrate this point:
If a person is out walking their dog and throwing a stick for it, as it is off the lead it may be considered to be out of control. If the dog is barking in excitement and while chasing after the stick it happens to bump into someone accidentally this can be legally regarded as to be an attack. In the event the person so bumped into gets knocked down and injured then the attack is deemed to generally be aggravated and a jail term for the owner is possible and destruction of the dog is possible. It would be worthwhile getting expert legal advice should you find yourself in this position.
Thankfully, to date no court in the United Kingdom has interpreted the law in this manner, but it is certainly possible.
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