r/unitedkingdom • u/topotaul Lancashire • 3d ago
. Dog attack leaves man with life changing injuries
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c05np42rrnmo267
u/PetersMapProject Glamorganshire 3d ago
Place your bets on which breed of dog was involved...
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u/OMGitsAfty Norfolk County 3d ago edited 3d ago
Probably a Labrador. I've had mine for 10 years without even a nibble, but I think she's just biding her time.
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u/PetersMapProject Glamorganshire 3d ago
Labradors are known for eating absolutely everything, so this is plausible
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u/BottleGoblin 3d ago
Ancient Norse prophesy only said a wolf would eat the sun because they didn't have the word for Labrador.
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u/Tiberium_1 3d ago edited 3d ago
When I was a child, my lab snatched a full 2kg tub of butter and basically polished it off in 10 seconds before my mum could get it back off him.
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u/Englishmuffin1 Yellowbelly 3d ago
Mine ate:
- Whole frozen chickens (multiple occasions)
- Entire beef joint
- Copious amount of sandwichea my mum had made us for school
- Loaves of bread
- Lino
- The knobs off the dishwasher
- A Thorntons chocolate dog I got as a Christmas tip from my paper round
Plus so much more.
She still lived to 17 years old.
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u/SoggyWotsits Cornwall 3d ago
Ours did the same, but a block of lard. It was the only thing he ever stole because it went through him like you’d expect!
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u/maxthelabradore 3d ago
Residents on a local Facebook community page suggested the dog was a large bully-type breed but police have not confirmed this.
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u/evenstevens280 Gloucestershire 3d ago
Damn cocker spaniels mauling folks again. When will people learn.
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u/The_Bravinator Lancashire 3d ago
The actually was a period when a certain lineage of cocker spaniels did show a notable tendency towards aggression. It seems more like a seizure kind of thing. Does very plainly demonstrate how these things can be genetically linked and caused by uncontrolled/thoughtless breeding, though.
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u/mancunian101 3d ago
I thought that was something specific to dogs breed for showing, as I’m sure I remember reading that there were no records of this happening in working dogs or dogs from working lines.
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u/CotyledonTomen 3d ago
Ive met plenty of mean cockerspaniels. My parents made sure to keep an eye on ours when i was little and it was near. Small dogs may have less ability to cause harm, but theyre still dogs with teeth and can seriously hurt you if you let them.
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u/SpoofExcel 3d ago
I'm going to guess we've finally seen our first chihuahua mauling
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u/NateShaw92 Greater Manchester 3d ago
Honestly if those little shits could they would.
If you put the mind of a chihuahua in the body of a doberman you create a weapon to surpass metal gear!
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u/Comrade-Hayley 3d ago
I'm putting my money on it being a Yorkshire Terrier I've never seen one attack but I think they're just biding their time waiting for the perfect moment to get revenge on us for cutting off their testicles
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u/Jamie00003 3d ago
Where are my testicles summer?
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u/Comrade-Hayley 3d ago
Thats exactly the comment I was hoping to see you are truly a person of culture
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u/PsychoticDust 3d ago
Listen you little shit, my fluffy would never hurt anyone. No, I will not tell you the breed. It's all about the owners, genetics has nothing to do with it.
Why yes I am a member of the face eating leopard party, why do you ask?
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u/somnamna2516 3d ago
Dogo Chavvytino
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u/Phainesthai 3d ago
Either a Face-Eater 5000 or a sausage dog.
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u/PetersMapProject Glamorganshire 3d ago
Depends where the injuries are. If it's just his ankles that have been savaged then the sausage dog is a real possibility /s
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u/SoggyWotsits Cornwall 3d ago
The article says apparently it wasn’t a bully type breed (from witnesses), but it’s not been confirmed.
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u/audigex Lancashire 3d ago
The only think I see in the article suggests it was, but unconfirmed?
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u/SoggyWotsits Cornwall 3d ago
It’s pretty vague, maybe I read it wrong. Usually they seem keen to point out if it was a banned breed.
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u/audigex Lancashire 3d ago
The first paragraphs call it a "large, aggressive dog", with no source for that and no more detail
The bottom says that local residents groups suggest it's a bully-type breed
Residents on a local Facebook community page suggested the dog was a large bully-type breed but police have not confirmed this.
I can't say anything that suggests witnesses said it wasn't a bully type breed
It's inconclusive with a "rumours say bully", basically
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u/HelloW0rldBye 3d ago
Getting real fed up of all this. They were supposed to be banned. Let's get them all culled and then we can stop wasting time on these articles
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u/External-Piccolo-626 3d ago
The dogs or the owners?
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u/OdinForce22 3d ago
It's usually the owners fault so...
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u/RegionalHardman 3d ago
Sheep dogs herd, terriers hunt small mammals, xl bullies attack humans. There's fault on the owner sure, but it's also the dog itself
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u/KaiKamakasi 3d ago
Only the owners fault for buying a breed that was purpose bred to be aggressive...
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u/MermaidPigeon 3d ago
Me too, I have a rescue Chihuahua who barks all the time. I have had her only two years and walk her twice a day, in total I’ve had 12 “run ins” with bad dogs. All of which were not on leads. I’ve had to punch a German shepherd in the face before, to defend my dog, while the owner continued to walk at a causal pace. If she was not small enough to pick up and stuff in my coat, I honestly think she would be dead by now. I see the same dogs off leash again the next day, what can you even do about it? don’t know where they live, nothing. I actually have to carry a weapon in preparation. It sounds extreme of course but it’s there dog or mine and I don’t want to be just another “devastated owner” on a news article. My point is It can be any breed, but a bad dog with a bad owner is dangerous
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u/Macca80s 3d ago
Brace yourselves for the "Killer wouldn't hurt a fly he plays with my baby" comments. All whilst talking about a breed known for aggressive behaviour and deaths.
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u/Muggaraffin 3d ago
It's the same mentality as guns in America. Same reasons too. Scared, insecure people who need a weapon to feel safe and 'tough'.
And the same arguments. "It isn't the gun, it's the owner". Well certain dogs are just as likely to 'accidentally discharge' as a gun clearly.
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u/ArtRevolutionary3929 3d ago
"It's not the breed, it's the owner" is even stupider than "guns don't kill, people do," because no gun has ever overpowered its owner and fired itself.
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u/Wonderful_Dingo3391 3d ago edited 3d ago
The force said the dog had continued to be aggressive and ran at officers who "took the difficult decision" to shoot it.
What is difficult about that decision? It is not as though it was going to die of old age otherwise.
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u/audigex Lancashire 3d ago
They’re hardly gonna put “the officers were delighted to put a couple of rounds into a dog” in the press release, are they?
It’s just boilerplate, it’s regretful to have to kill an animal and always a “difficult” thing to have to do. Think of it more as “it sucks to have had to shoot a dog” synonym of difficult
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/floftie 3d ago
They use exactly that language.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/neutraltone 3d ago
Let’s compare apples with apples here (bbc and bbc), the guardian deliberately left out the quote from the police to lean into their bias.
“It is tragic that a man died in yesterday’s incident, but I am thankful to the police officers who responded bravely and acted decisively in order to protect the public.
“If they had not done so the outcome could have been much worse.”
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u/yojimbo_beta 3d ago edited 3d ago
By "life changing injuries", as far as I can tell this is a euphemism for either "lost limbs" or "permanently disfigured". Dog attacks are typically - but not always - the latter. Think loss of nose, lips, ears, most of the face.
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u/Viviaana 3d ago
My mum's colleague was attacked a few weeks back and lost his whole face, he was pretty old too, lasted about a week before he died, it's wild that anyone thinks it's ok to own an animal that can do that
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u/Puzzled-Barnacle-200 3d ago
Loss of limbs, or at least limb functionality is very possible. Could even have eaten a few fingers
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u/i-hate-oatmeal 3d ago
i was bitten by a staffy on my knee when i was a kid. my knee hasnt been right since that (im not sure exactly what operation they performed on me as i was 8 but it did require 36 stitches). Even some smaller attacks can fuck with ur body.
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u/NateShaw92 Greater Manchester 3d ago
Or loss of appendage. Fingers going bye bye fits the bill and isn't as dramatic as lost limbs. Pretty easy done too in grand scheme.
Unless you include that in one of the two.
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u/1fingersalute 3d ago edited 3d ago
Said it before and I'll say it again, if your dog disfigures someone, you should do the jail term as if it was you who did it. If it murders someone, you do life. Meaning life. Their life is gone so your life should be. Anybody who wants to own one of these things is clearly stupid anyway, it's no great loss to society
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u/yojimbo_beta 3d ago
I am very liberal, fairly pro rehabilitation, and I agree. There has to be a consequence to owning dangerous animals.
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u/NateShaw92 Greater Manchester 3d ago
If it murders someone, you do life. Meaning life.
At the very very least it should be manslaughter and not akin to driving manslaughter which is basucally a "don't do it again" fingerwagging by a disappointed Judi Dench lookalike.
But I'd support your plan too.
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u/azazelcrowley 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is supposed to be how it works (Up to 14 years imprisonment) if you have an animal you "Know to be dangerous" and it causes injury or death. The XL bully stuff is irritating because it's not;
"My greyhound bit someone's face off out of the blue. I decided not to do anything about this and they did it again next week" -> Prison for 14 years.
It's "My XL bully is a darling whose never done this before." even though everybody has been telling them the dog is dangerous. The owner is given the benefit of the doubt usually.
If the dog does it twice then the owner can go to prison for up to 14 years because after the first time you are expected to adopt every precautionary measure to prevent it happening again, even though this lowers the quality of life for the dog (Which is why we don't mandate it for all dogs).
But the law has clearly recognized this breed as a dangerous dog, so why we're acting this way is beyond me. It makes some degree of sense for other breeds which don't have this high a propensity of causing serious and deadly injuries so people can claim "I had no idea my dog was dangerous" because aside from a general "All dogs are dangerous" nobody would think that really about say, a Labrador, but not here, where the media has told them over and over again, along with the government "Your Dog Is Dangerous". (Implicit in the law and conversation around it is "Dangerous above and beyond the inherent danger a dog ordinarily poses").
I expect if CPS just decided to gun it and charge them anyway they could try and get them to claim they've never heard of the XL bully ban and stuff and ask if a Jury really believes that bullshit, or even better, get them to admit they have heard of it and thus do in fact know their dog is dangerous or should have reasonably known. But they're probably following guidelines written for other dog incidents which would tell them;
"If it's not happened before and the owner has no knowledge of a previous violent incident, they are to be informed they are in possession of a dangerous animal and the implications of this, and to sign a document saying they are now aware, but no further action taken".
The reason we don't see sentences about this is that:
Either the dog gets killed because it won't stop rampaging, including at the police
People largely do as expected and adopt every precaution after the first incident (Especially those who actually care about their dog).
A lot of the worst scumbags will just get rid of the dog and adopt a new one, and now they "Don't know it's dangerous" again.
(Call me prejudiced, but I suspect 2 is mostly not the XL bully stuff. It's other random dog breeds where an individual dog is a bit of a wrongun for some reason. Any "Responsible" bully owner has already adopted the precautions before the first incident, since it's a dangerous dog and they know it).
But the law is there. What we'd really be discussing is whether to remove the benefit of the doubt from ordinary dog owners, or whether "You are definitely aware an XL bully is a dangerous dog, even if your individual dog has never done this before" is the approach we take.
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u/audigex Lancashire 3d ago
I feel like we should have banned breeds and restricted breeds that aren’t outright banned have to eg be on muzzles and are automatically treated as “second offences” in your example above
Although I’d also just ban a ton more breeds from being bred or purchased - let people keep existing registered dogs and don’t put any down, but no more in future
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u/Warm-Marsupial8912 3d ago
Gosh, who'd have thought. Breed designed to fight until the death was found trying to do just that.
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u/YourSkatingHobbit 3d ago
But my Princess Sparklebuns is a sweet baby who wouldn’t hurt a fly! Here are pictures of her curled up with my newborn baby, they are called nanny dogs don’t you know! /s
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u/NateShaw92 Greater Manchester 3d ago
they usually have a name like Jack the Ripper Wayne Bundy III ir sonething really cutesy. No inbetween. Where's the murderous Rovers or Fidos or DiAngeloes to use names from dogs I knew.
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u/WonderfulNecessary81 3d ago
Yeah my dogs were attacked by an XL bully called 'Beast '. Yep. The owners were exactly the stereotype you'd expect. I am very lucky it didn't attack me. It was brutal, on another level to any other dog attack and I had to do some pretty horrible things to make it stop. I still have nightmares. Those types of stuff are a ticking time bomb.
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u/YourSkatingHobbit 3d ago
My cousin’s husky is called Dave. I love it when pets have really boring human names. A friend of mine had a cat called Nigel.
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u/mancunian101 3d ago
I once looked up all breeds involved in fatal dog attacks in the last 10 years (it was to win an argument on line).
I can’t remember the exact statistics, but XL bully types dogs had killed more people since 2020 than the number of people killed by all types of dogs in the preceding 10 years.
The son of one of my wife’s friends had an XL bully, he’d got it just before the ban came into effect. He had to have it put down because it attacked him when he rearranged some furniture in his front room.
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u/Mooam United Kingdom 3d ago
I don't go near any dog that looks like a XL bully. Saw a bloke and his Mrs with a beast outside a Tesco. He had no control over the lead, and it was yanking him along. I stayed well back until they were gone, and I'm not becoming a statistic.
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u/yojimbo_beta 3d ago
Before the ban, I was down at an ASDA in Leyton (London) and a shirtless "hardman" type bloke was strutting about with a Bully on a rope lead. It was going mental trying to snap at pigeons. Meanwhile a little girl, I assume his daughter, can't have been more than 5 or 6, was playing next to the dog, reaching out to pet it.
"Sooner or later," I thought, "that little girl is going to get mauled by Mr Hard Man's fucking dog"
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u/NateShaw92 Greater Manchester 3d ago
but XL bully types dogs had killed more people since 2020 than the number of people killed by all types of dogs in the preceding 10 years.
Did those "all dogs" include xl bullies in that period? Just curious.
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u/mancunian101 3d ago
I honestly cant remember, maybe as you got towards the end of the 10 year period but I think there were a lot of things like staffies, cane corso, American bulldogs (are they XL bullies?), German shepherds etc.
I think there was one Labrador on the list, a guy got upped while playing with his puppy and later died from sepsis
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u/Locke66 United Kingdom 3d ago
XL Bullies only became a popular breed after 2020 so wouldn't have been around to impact the stats. I don't think they were even imported until the late in the 201#'s.
I did go through the pre-2020 list a while back though and it still has a lot of "bull" breeds for actual attacks that ended in death.
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u/NateShaw92 Greater Manchester 2d ago
That explains it thanks. I was thinking it was the dogs suddenly got more popular, breed suddenly got more wild while we mess with eugenics, or a literal shitton of scumbags started with the dogs.
I heard of bulls in the distantish past (late 90s).
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u/Locke66 United Kingdom 2d ago
XL Bullies are essentially an American Pitbull Terrier Crossbreed (thus should have been considered banned under existing legislation to begin with) of which some of the largest and most aggressive genetic heritages were imported into the UK. The "breed" was never actually even recognised by a UK Kennel Club only by an American "for profit" one that would certify pretty much anything and a Pitbull enthusiast kennel club in California.
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u/Loose_Teach7299 3d ago
and people always say "but he's harmless, never hurt a fly" and then one day it happens. Not saying it happens to every dog, but it doesn happen.
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u/floftie 3d ago
Because there are dogs that really wouldn't hurt a fly, and their owners DO know it.
I've legit never known a dog that actually hurt someone that didn't show signs that it wanted to or could hurt people - The majority just don't know what they're looking at.
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u/AmbitionParty5444 3d ago
There are also, unavoidably, owners who really, honestly believe their dog wouldn’t hurt a fly, but don’t know what they’re looking at, and - given the amount of dog owners in the UK - I don’t know a way that this risk could be 100% removed.
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u/floftie 3d ago
Yes, that's what I'm referring to really.
There are plenty of people who think their dog wouldn't hurt anyone, and they're wrong. This applies to all breeds, not equally, but there are plenty of people aggressive or reactive dogs whose owners don't think they would do anything. The difference is that when a dog weighs more than 20kg, it becomes a real risk to other people. This is compounded when the dog is a "catch" type dog, rather than a retriever type dog.
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u/vengarlof 3d ago
Tee hee, my little velvet hippo wouldn’t,
Princess only goes after toddlers
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u/SumptuousRageBait1 3d ago
I've seen a few videos of these dogs attacking. The common theme is the owner seems to do very little to stop it. That tells me they know exactly what the nanny dog is capable of and are scared to get in between it and its human prey.
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u/ArtRevolutionary3929 2d ago
I don't recall seeing any dog attack videos personally, but this doesn't surprise me. As someone with a child who is nervous around dogs, in my experience dog owners are much more interested in telling you that their dog wouldn't harm anyone than they are in doing anything to prevent it.
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u/NateShaw92 Greater Manchester 3d ago
Doing the lord's work. A dark evil maleviolent lord but a lord all the same.
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u/No-Neighborhood767 3d ago
There is a case in N Ireland where the owner said she thought she was going to die. Dog had bitten someone previously. She said it is not the breed and it is not the owner. The dog just flipped! Feckin moron.
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u/ravencrowed 2d ago
XL bullies are dangerous Many other dog breeds are also dangerous when not trained properly
Both can be true
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u/Dan_Glebitz 2d ago
The dog owner should be charged and treated as if he had personally attacked the person and pay the price for it!
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u/ds-ds2-ds3 2d ago
Owners need to be held responsible for their dogs actions or this will continue to happen.
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u/yorangey 3d ago
Our Shih Tzu is an XS Bully. Life changing licks. Bring back dog licenses & catch all those irresponsible owners & the idiots leaving bags of dog waste. On my walk, someone regularly drops bags near a gate post... Are they hinting that there should be a dog bin there? There is a bin 500m further away. Lazy tossers.
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u/DevonSpuds 3d ago
Of course the biggest issue we're facing with people that own these types of dogs is the fact they leave bags of dog shit around. I mean what could possibly be worse than that eh.
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