[ZenGum]

About a month ago there was an incident in Victoria.

A dog escaped from its yard, and got into the neighbours yard. It attacked the neighbour, and adult woman. She ran inside her house. The dog followed, barged in, attacked everyone in sight. It killed a three year old girl (who was the neice of one of my colleagues).

The dog was of mixed breed with various pit-bull type strains. Everywhere already requires that all dogs be registered, and some states have dangerous dog registration as well (you have to build a stronger fence and put up warning signs, and muzzle it if you take it out in public). Victoria is looking at strenghtening their breed specific legislation.

IMHO, it is a bit like cars. Very few people have been killed drag racing in a suzuki hatchback, and no-one has ever been mauled to death by a chihuahua. A small number die driving Lancers and Imprezas, and a few die from bulldogs etc. Monster trucks are banned from the roads, and keeping wolves is likewise illegal without a specific zoo permit.

So I don't have a problem* with legislating restrictions on a particular breed if it can be shown that that breed is more likely to be dangerous to humans - even though there will be individual dogs of that breed that are perfectly fine. The only issue is where to put the lines between "go for it", "with special conditions" and "not on your life", and how to deal with rulebreakers.

My way, though, would be to make the dog owner liable for the consequences of their dog's actions exactly as if they had done them. The owner of the dog I mentioned above would be charged with murder. So you can have any dog you like, but it is up to the human to take responsibility and make sure nothing bad happens.


* except the one about determining eactly what breed a dog is, and how you define each breed. I'm talking moral/ethical/legal problems, not practical. Hmph, practical. I'm a philosopher.