Coroner Calls For Laws On Breeding Restricted Breeds

[sumosmum]

I thought this was already n offence in States with BSL? It is in NSW. Last line is interesting though.

http://au.news.yahoo...estricted-dogs/

A coroner wants politicians to make the breeding of restricted dogs a criminal offence as a result of the death of a four-year-old Melbourne girl who was mauled by a pit bull terrier.

The dog attacked Ayen Chol as she clung to her mother's legs in her St Albans home last year.

Neighbour Lazor Josevski, 58, was minding the dog for his son when it escaped from the backyard.

He pleaded guilty to four charges and was fined $11,000.

Coroner Kim Parkinson has ruled that Mr Josevski and his son Nick Josevski contributed to the girl's death by concealing the dog's breed from the council.

She has recommended that the parliament introduce laws to ban the breeding of restricted dogs, and that veterinarians should be required to report them.

She also said the onus of proving that a dog is a restricted breed should fall on its owner and not on councils.

I don't think the person who bred the dog did anything legally wrong at the time. The dog was born prior to the new laws. At the time the dog was born, only purebred APBT were restricted breed, and the sire of the dog involved in the attack weighs in at 45kg.

[Aidan3]

There are a number of things in the news reports which make me wonder if what is being reported correlates with what the coroner has actually said?

[m-sass]

More people are killed by sharks and horses in this country than dogs.

trouble is, m-sass, that many of the dogs being blamed and vilified are not restricted breeds at all. And your breed - whatever it is - could well be in the same situation with a change in attitude by the government.

BSL has been overturned in a lot of countries, as not working. It will happen here. Unfortunately, these findings do nothing to help prevent another dog attack tragedy.

It is all too easy to see how this could have happened. Too easy to never release photos of the dog, but say it was a restricted breed. Who knows? How disappointing.

I disagree with the fact that other breeds will be next as this has been tested with the Amstaff........if a breed is ANKC recognised it's as safe as houses from the BSL list. No government is going to overturn BSL and release import restrictions on Pitbull's Fila's Dogo's etc, absolute nonesense.

[KatrinaM]

Because ANKC breeds have never been subject to BSL in Australia - except for the GSD, dobe, Rott, mastiff, bull mastiff, bull terrier, Neapolitan Mastiff, great Dane, Anatolian, mareema, greyhound etc etc.

[megan_]

I think they left out an 'n't". That is now the law in Victoria - you need to prove that your dog isn't a pitbull, but you're not allowed to use DNA testing to do that. In fact, you can't even use a pedigree unless the pedigree is for an Amstaff.

Brookstar - it is not normal dog behaviour to kill someone, attack someone else and have to be beaten off with a chair simply because they run away and scream. If it was normal dog behaviour to do this there would be a lot more dead children and I, for one, would call for ALL dogs to be banned.

[Aidan3]

I think you may be right, Megan, although it's still an astounding suggestion. Burden of proof and all that. "Prove you're not a witch!"

[WreckitWhippet]

Ban the breding of all cross breds and dogs that aren't registered with the ANKC or "working" clubs and be done with it .

[melzawelza]

Ban the breding of all cross breds and dogs that aren't registered with the ANKC or "working" clubs and be done with it .

Yes cos that's totally doable and enforceable.

If the resources aren't there to stop just the APBT being bred how are they supposed to police ALL cross breeds?! And exactly what do you do with the cross breeds that are inevitably born? Kill them? Seize them?

[WreckitWhippet]

Ban the breding of all cross breds and dogs that aren't registered with the ANKC or "working" clubs and be done with it .

Yes cos that's totally doable and enforceable.

If the resources aren't there to stop just the APBT being bred how are they supposed to police ALL cross breeds?! And exactly what do you do with the cross breeds that are inevitably born? Kill them? Seize them?

Then we won't have to worry about playing spot the Pitbull, you'll either own an ANKC recognised breed or FCI breed or not have a dog at all.

[melzawelza]

Ban the breding of all cross breds and dogs that aren't registered with the ANKC or "working" clubs and be done with it .

Yes cos that's totally doable and enforceable.

If the resources aren't there to stop just the APBT being bred how are they supposed to police ALL cross breeds?! And exactly what do you do with the cross breeds that are inevitably born? Kill them? Seize them?

Then we won't have to worry about playing spot the Pitbull, you'll either own an ANKC recognised breed or FCI breed or not have a dog at all.

That argument is as silly as BSL itself. All well and good in principle but completely impossible in the real world.

[Dame Aussie]

the fact is APBT do have a lock jaw bite

You really, really just said that, didn't you?

Unfortunately people don't like to take notice of SCIENCE which disproves things they want to be true.

[Jed]

More people are killed by sharks and horses in this country than dogs.

trouble is, m-sass, that many of the dogs being blamed and vilified are not restricted breeds at all. And your breed - whatever it is - could well be in the same situation with a change in attitude by the government.

BSL has been overturned in a lot of countries, as not working. It will happen here. Unfortunately, these findings do nothing to help prevent another dog attack tragedy.

It is all too easy to see how this could have happened. Too easy to never release photos of the dog, but say it was a restricted breed. Who knows? How disappointing.

I disagree with the fact that other breeds will be next as this has been tested with the Amstaff........if a breed is ANKC recognised it's as safe as houses from the BSL list. No government is going to overturn BSL and release import restrictions on Pitbull's Fila's Dogo's etc, absolute nonesense.

As it is a numpty law which has not prevented any dog bites, and it is the same law which has been repealed in numerous places around the world, I believe it will be overturned.

If it is not repealed, Australia will be the same as other countries, and more breeds will be included in the mix. Newspapers are already speaking of banning staffords and rottweilers.

Do you have any research on import restrictions to allow you to say "absolute nonsense" with confidence, or is that your opinion?

[Silvawilow]

I thought this was already n offence in States with BSL? It is in NSW. Last line is interesting though.

http://au.news.yahoo...estricted-dogs/

A coroner wants politicians to make the breeding of restricted dogs a criminal offence as a result of the death of a four-year-old Melbourne girl who was mauled by a pit bull terrier.

The dog attacked Ayen Chol as she clung to her mother's legs in her St Albans home last year.

Neighbour Lazor Josevski, 58, was minding the dog for his son when it escaped from the backyard.

He pleaded guilty to four charges and was fined $11,000.

Coroner Kim Parkinson has ruled that Mr Josevski and his son Nick Josevski contributed to the girl's death by concealing the dog's breed from the council.

She has recommended that the parliament introduce laws to ban the breeding of restricted dogs, and that veterinarians should be required to report them.

She also said the onus of proving that a dog is a restricted breed should fall on its owner and not on councils.

I don't think the person who bred the dog did anything legally wrong at the time. The dog was born prior to the new laws. At the time the dog was born, only purebred APBT were restricted breed, and the sire of the dog involved in the attack weighs in at 45kg.

I thought it was illegal, at time of dog being born that RB's could be entire?

[sumosmum]

I thought this was already n offence in States with BSL? It is in NSW. Last line is interesting though.

http://au.news.yahoo...estricted-dogs/

A coroner wants politicians to make the breeding of restricted dogs a criminal offence as a result of the death of a four-year-old Melbourne girl who was mauled by a pit bull terrier.

The dog attacked Ayen Chol as she clung to her mother's legs in her St Albans home last year.

Neighbour Lazor Josevski, 58, was minding the dog for his son when it escaped from the backyard.

He pleaded guilty to four charges and was fined $11,000.

Coroner Kim Parkinson has ruled that Mr Josevski and his son Nick Josevski contributed to the girl's death by concealing the dog's breed from the council.

She has recommended that the parliament introduce laws to ban the breeding of restricted dogs, and that veterinarians should be required to report them.

She also said the onus of proving that a dog is a restricted breed should fall on its owner and not on councils.

I don't think the person who bred the dog did anything legally wrong at the time. The dog was born prior to the new laws. At the time the dog was born, only purebred APBT were restricted breed, and the sire of the dog involved in the attack weighs in at 45kg.

I thought it was illegal, at time of dog being born that RB's could be entire?

At the time the dog was born, the law only applied to purebred American Pit Bull Terriers. So, with the Sire weighing in at 45kg, he would not have been a restricted breed dog because he is not a purebred APBT. Probably isn't restricted breed now either. I don't know any other way to explain that to you.

[Tempus Fugit]

The Coroner's findings are now accessible from the website I listed in my previous post.

[Aphra]

Reading the Coroner's report is in equal parts interesting and heart breaking. Some of the child's death are graphic and very distressing, so please be warned if you are going to read it. The evidence from the vet who examined the dog in the first instance is disturbing. The vets who gave evidence about the dog's breed draw conclusions about its behaviour based on their identification of it as a Pit Bull.

One of the vets gave evidence about the dog's condition which very clearly indicates that the dog, while of good weight, was in poor condition (I've attached a photo of the relevant section).

The report goes into great detail about identifying the breeding of the dog, but there's little about how it was kept, managed or socialised. From the report it seems that the owner's evidence of how and why the dog was kept was accepted without question. My reading of it is, that once the breed of the dog was established, the assumption was that breed was sufficient explanation of behaviour.

From the reported condition of the dog, it clearly fits into the category which the US Center for Canine Research calls "resident dogs", which are dogs which live on the property, but which are not family dogs. The condition of the dog strongly suggests that apart from yearly vaccinations and food, it didn't get the necessary veterinary attention to what must have been painful sores.

My sense is that this is a very political document, designed to support the current legislation. It recycles unquestioningly the mythology about bull breeds, and completely misses any opportunity to investigate why this particular dog, in this circumstance, behaved in such a way.

I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed, that the tragic death of a child hasn't prompted a proper and serious investigation into the issue, and has instead relied on superficial observations which are completely unsupported by any of the evidence-based research available. I think Ayen Chol and her family have been short-changed in their grief by a shallow political agenda.

I don't think I'd be drawing too big a conclusion to suggest that a dog with those kind of pressure sores is not a cherished family pet, and that it probably lived in the garage on concrete (I'd even guess it was tethered because otherwise you'd think it would be out every time the garage door was opened), didn't spend a lot of time with humans, was clearly under-socialised, under-exercised, in pain, and once it was out, it's level of arousal was extreme.

[BlackJaq]

Wow, how disappointing.

When I dared state in one of the other threads on this topic that I believed that the coroner was going to be finding exactly this in relation to the breed of dog and ignoring most other aspects of its care etc, I was shot down and claims were being made that the woman (this was pointed out to me because apparently the sex of the coroner was extremely important) coroner was going to be smart and objective enough to see past the BSL crap.

I've never been sadder to be right in any case and this is disgusting. I wonder how long it will take for the law makers to realize that BSL does not in any way prevent these kind of things from happening, if ever.

Edited October 12, 2012 by BlackJaq

[Ruin Maniac]

I got the same impression reading this article through. It frustrates me to no end that people continue to recycle the "some breeds are vicious no matter how you train them" myth.

Dogs like that need good handlers. Unfortunately, they don't end up with them often enough. I'd blame lack of regulation on dog breeding and sales, not the breed itself. I'd also like to see mandatory dog training classes for first-time owners, and education programs for children about how to approach dogs (and how to avoid them) in schools.

[melzawelza]

Reading the Coroner's report is in equal parts interesting and heart breaking. Some of the child's death are graphic and very distressing, so please be warned if you are going to read it. The evidence from the vet who examined the dog in the first instance is disturbing. The vets who gave evidence about the dog's breed draw conclusions about its behaviour based on their identification of it as a Pit Bull.

One of the vets gave evidence about the dog's condition which very clearly indicates that the dog, while of good weight, was in poor condition (I've attached a photo of the relevant section).

The report goes into great detail about identifying the breeding of the dog, but there's little about how it was kept, managed or socialised. From the report it seems that the owner's evidence of how and why the dog was kept was accepted without question. My reading of it is, that once the breed of the dog was established, the assumption was that breed was sufficient explanation of behaviour.

From the reported condition of the dog, it clearly fits into the category which the US Center for Canine Research calls "resident dogs", which are dogs which live on the property, but which are not family dogs. The condition of the dog strongly suggests that apart from yearly vaccinations and food, it didn't get the necessary veterinary attention to what must have been painful sores.

My sense is that this is a very political document, designed to support the current legislation. It recycles unquestioningly the mythology about bull breeds, and completely misses any opportunity to investigate why this particular dog, in this circumstance, behaved in such a way.

I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed, that the tragic death of a child hasn't prompted a proper and serious investigation into the issue, and has instead relied on superficial observations which are completely unsupported by any of the evidence-based research available. I think Ayen Chol and her family have been short-changed in their grief by a shallow political agenda.

I don't think I'd be drawing too big a conclusion to suggest that a dog with those kind of pressure sores is not a cherished family pet, and that it probably lived in the garage on concrete (I'd even guess it was tethered because otherwise you'd think it would be out every time the garage door was opened), didn't spend a lot of time with humans, was clearly under-socialised, under-exercised, in pain, and once it was out, it's level of arousal was extreme.

Aphra, thank you for putting into words so eloquently all that I felt while reading the report. I read it before bed last night and couldn't sleep I was so upset and angry. I hopes for so much more. I hoped we would actually learn something from this poor little girl's death and would be able to finally put some evidence-based measures into place.

Ayen Chol deserved so much more and I'm disgusted. Political document is right. The dog was 40 kilos! For them to just accept unequivocally from the start that the dog was an APBT is mind boggling. To then decide that the sole reason for the attack was the dogs supposed breed... UGH!!!!

[Linda K]

sadly it does not surprise me - as others have stated, didn't think it was ever going to be other that in total support of the gov knee jerk legislation, esp given the recommendation was also centered around suggesting something that has already been in place for many years. A disappointing waste of time, and sadly achieves little to stop it occurring again, whilst people live in blissful ignorance with the reassurance that their gov has done something, so everything is OK now