Britain is caught in the jaws of a dangerous dog.
In the past two years, fatal dog attacks in the UK have increased dramatically. It used to be that around three people a year were killed by dogs. In 2022, that rose to ten people – including four children. Another five people have already been killed by dogs in 2023.
This rise is disproportionately explained by one breed: the American Bully, a close relative of the already banned American Pit Bull Terrier, which was cruelly bred to fight other dogs to the death. The American Bully now accounts for over 70 per cent of deaths from dogs in the UK since 2021. It is also behind nearly half of all dog attacks, the majority of these being against other dogs or pets. In one week of July this year, one dog a day was killed by an American Bully in the UK.
Despite these astounding figures, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) are aggressively lobbying the government to prevent not only a ban on the American Bully, but to bring the American Pit Bull Terrier (responsible for around 60 per cent of all deaths to dogs in the US) and other dangerous dog breeds back to the UK.
The RSPCA calls their view on dangerous dogs ‘anti BSL’, meaning anti-Breed Specific Legislation. As this suggests, the argument is that there are no differences in aggression between different dog breeds. In other words, whilst the RSPCA presumably agrees that Pointers point and Retrievers retrieve, they say ‘there’s no robust scientific evidence to suggest that prohibited types are more likely to be involved in dog bite incidents or fatalities than any other breed’, and ‘although it might seem that some dogs are born to be aggressive, it is more accurate to say that they are born with inherited tendencies that might, if not controlled, make aggressive behaviour more likely.’ That dog fighting rings created breeds specifically for the purpose of killing is seemingly irrelevant to the RSPCA’s belief that breed barely matters.
Their view is clearly false. To hold this position you have to ignore mounds of scientific data, publicly available figures on attacks and deaths, and cherry-pick research. Indeed, it seems even the RSPCA itself doesn’t really believe that all breeds are created equal. Their own dog insurance, for example, will not cover multiple fighting breeds, such as the American Pitbull Terrier, and even other fighting breeds that are not forbidden by the Dangerous Dogs Act. The American Bully is not even listed by the RSPCA’s insurance arm as a separate breed. Anyone wanting to insure their Bully has to register it as an Pitbull-cross, meaning it would be denied any cover. Such dogs, it seems, are too risky to insure.
This hypocrisy is only the tip of the absurd iceberg. The RSPCA states that from 1991 (the year of the Dangerous Dogs Act and the banning of breeds such as the American Pit Bull Terrier) to 2016 there were 30 deaths caused by dogs. Of these deaths, the RSPCA confidently declares ‘only nine were carried out by dogs identified as Pit Bull terrier types’. This conveniently ignores the fact that despite a ban on Pit Bulls, they nevertheless still managed to account for almost one-third of all UK deaths by dog. That is quite some achievement for a breed supposedly not any more prone to violence than your average Cockapoo.
The rot of these bad arguments goes deeper. A central thrust of the RSPCA’s anti-BSL lobbying concerns ‘bites’. The charity says that, despite a ban of dangerous breeds, dog-bites have increased by 154 per cent since 1999 to 2019. This shows, they say, that breed bans do not work. Whilst this completely ignores the obvious counterfactual (would these numbers be worse without breed bans?) it is also deeply misleading. In these figures, a bite from a chihuahua is treated the same as an arm torn off by an American Bully. As the RSPCA likely well knows, it is not ‘bites’ that the public cares about – it is bites that maim, and dogs that kill.
Fighting breeds, like the American Bully, were bred from stock that could survive intense battles that sometimes lasted hours, while they were locked in a pit and forced to fight to the death. Fight winners were selectively bred for their ability to obliterate their opponent – which was another dog that had been similarly selected for those same violent traits. It is not surprising that the American Bully, founded on intensive inbreeding from fighting dogs in the late 1980s and early 90s, is responsible for deaths and maulings so severe that one victim had to be identified by his shoe.
It is difficult to know why the RSPCA is choosing to pick this fight. Why are they spending their limited donations defending dog breeds they won’t even insure themselves? Strangely, it is not even that the RSPCA is against animal bans. They have supported calls for bans on the importing and breeding of domestic wild cat hybrids – so-called dangerous cats – on the grounds that they suffer too much in domestic settings.
Whatever the reason, the RSPCA should re-examine its purpose. It is bizarre that the animal welfare charity Peta – not known for its moderation – somehow has a more sensible American Bully position than the RSPCA. In response to the repeated attacks and killings of other dogs by the American Bully, Peta has openly called for a breeding ban, saying that ‘no one can pretend that owners are solely to blame’. Instead, Peta say, it is ‘an undeniable fact that the most serious and fatal dog attacks are by bully breeds’. An undeniable fact that the RSPCA is choosing to consistently ignore.
Unfortunately the RSPCA have the ear of government on this issue. A recent freedom of information request found that an RSPCA representative sits on Defra’s dangerous dog taskforce. Until the charity re-examines its position, it is likely that more people and dogs will be attacked, maimed and killed by this breed.
Just last week, two women were mauled trying to save their dogs from an unprovoked assault by two American Bullies. They were lucky in the end, and were only severely injured, not killed. The RSPCA and government need to wake up to the horrifying reality that is the American Bully in Britain.
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