Dog Act flaws very glaring

Certain conditions of the Act are counter-productive. For instance, there is a clause that states that “dangerous dogs” are never to be allowed off of their owner’s premises. However, one of the most important elements in ensuring that a dog is well adjusted is for him to be socialised at an early age. How can an owner socialise a dog that never meets new people, animals and situations?

The Dangerous Dog Act is considered a Breed Specific Legislation (BSL) – meaning it seeks to control specified breeds of dogs, not all dogs. Many countries in Europe, the UK, parts of Canada and many cities in the United States have also tried BSL. And many are now in the process of repealing those laws. Why can’t Trinidad learn from the best practices of other countries — instead why do we feel compelled to repeat the mistakes of other countries? Scotland, England, Canada, the Netherlands, the US — they have all reported that dog attacks did not decrease after the BSL was introduced. Why are we introducing something that is doomed to failure?

BSL is prohibitively expensive to run. In (often very rich) countries that have tried BSL (and failed) there was already an operational animal control unit in place. But in Trinidad there is no such unit — how is this Act going to be monitored? Are the police, who are already stretched to their fullest extent, going to be taken off of trying to cope with crime and criminals to make sure that people have permits for their dogs? Or is a whole new set of staff going to be hired, trained and given the resources to do follow-ups? If the latter, this is very expensive — with the budget being in the precarious state that it is said to be in — where is the money coming from on a sustained basis?

There is no “grandfather” allowance in this Act that makes provision for families and individuals who already have pitbulls (but cannot afford the insurance requirement of the new regulations) to be able to keep their pets. These people are going to be forced to kill their animals (who would buy or adopt them?). What is the trauma of losing a beloved pet in such an arbitrary and unjust manner going to do to the minds of thousands of citizens, especially the children of the country?

The initial enforcement of this Act presents administrative problems for the authorities and personal tragedy for the owners. What about the dogs that are not turned in by their families to be killed, but are simply let loose? The Government is not able to control the stray population as it is right now — how are they going to round up all these pitbulls that even dog catchers (the few that there are) are afraid of?

Many dogs look like pit bulls and many dogs that are crossed with pitbulls don’t look anything like pitbulls. How are the authorities going to determine what is, or isn’t, a pitbull? Are we going to end up with a situation like what happened in Ireland with Lennox — a mixed breed dog who was forcibly taken from its owners two years ago and since then has been kept in a filthy kennel with no socialisation, no human contact, no exercise — and he did nothing wrong except for appearing to be a pitbull in somebody’s eyes, even though he was not.

Mardy Mohammed

Diego Martin