In one month, Trinidad and To­ba­go has been sub­ject­ed to the on­slaught of five sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in­volv­ing dan­ger­ous dogs.On April 8, a home­less man known on­ly as "King" was mauled to death by two Rot­tweil­ers when he en­tered a prop­er­ty at Fifth Street, San Juan to pick limes from a tree. Cit­i­zens com­mend­ed the dogs since they were do­ing their job of pro­tect­ing their own­er's home and safe­ty.

How­ev­er, on April 12, four-year-old Ezekiel Renne-Cam­bridge was mauled and crit­i­cal­ly in­jured by two dogs, a Ger­man Shep­herd and an Aki­ta mixed, while walk­ing with his grand­moth­er near his Palmiste home. He suf­fered se­vere wounds to his chest and back, but has sur­vived. Res­i­dents of Palmiste have signed a pe­ti­tion for the dogs to be eu­thanised and have in­di­cat­ed that this is the sec­ond per­son at­tacked by these dogs, along with three small dogs, one of whom was killed.

These at­tacks have not been lim­it­ed to Trinidad. On May 2, Shan­ice Archie, 13, was at­tacked by a Pit­bull Ter­ri­er on her way home from school in Good­wood, To­ba­go. She was lucky to es­cape with her life, af­ter suf­fer­ing bites to the hand and foot. Res­i­dents of the vil­lage called for the dog to be put to sleep af­ter say­ing that this was its fourth at­tack on hu­mans.Sad­ly, on May 8, se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer Denise Rack­al, 46, and moth­er of two, was at­tacked and killed by a pack of pit­bull ter­ri­ers on her way to work in Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas. She re­ceived wounds to the throat, head and chest and died be­fore re­ceiv­ing med­ical at­ten­tion. Neigh­bours "called for jus­tice" by de­mand­ing that the dogs be "put to death" say­ing that this was the sixth time the dogs had at­tacked res­i­dents in the area, al­so hav­ing killed sev­en oth­er dogs.

On May 10, two pit­bull ter­ri­ers at­tacked 51-year-old Carl Joseph in Diego Mar­tin. They bit him se­vere­ly on the arm, neck and head. Joseph sur­vived the at­tack but the dogs were shot by po­lice of­fi­cers.Trinidad and To­ba­go has no epi­demi­o­log­i­cal da­ta on the num­ber of dog bites or at­tacks oc­cur­ring per year, and fa­tal­i­ties as a re­sult of dog at­tacks are not record­ed by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice.There are al­so no pub­lished re­ports on the size of the dog pop­u­la­tion or the num­ber of pets per house­hold for this coun­try. I as­sume that this type of in­for­ma­tion would be vi­tal when the gov­ern­ment has to jus­ti­fy cer­tain de­ci­sions and re­vise leg­is­la­tion. Why hasn't this da­ta col­lec­tion, re­search and analy­sis been un­der­tak­en yet?

All of the dogs in­volved in the above in­ci­dents have a his­to­ry of at­tack­ing hu­mans and oth­er an­i­mals. Why were no steps tak­en by the own­ers to re­ha­bil­i­tate these dogs af­ter their first at­tack, be­fore they caused so much dam­age to so­ci­ety to war­rant the at­ten­tion of the me­dia and gov­ern­ment?On­ly now is the Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act of 2000 up for re­view, which will hope­ful­ly ad­dress the many lim­i­ta­tions it con­tains be­fore it is pro­claimed.A dog is nev­er ag­gres­sive on a whim. The signs are there as a pup­py-signs which are of­ten ig­nored by own­ers or worse, en­cour­aged and en­hanced. These dog own­ers had a choice to bet­ter un­der­stand the be­hav­iour of their pets, seek re­me­di­al ther­a­py and pro­vide a safer life for their fam­i­lies and neigh­bours.T&T has ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing dan­ger­ous dogs: the Dogs Act of 1918. This Act places great em­pha­sis on own­er­less or stray dogs-the seiz­ing, de­ten­tion un­til claimed, and sale or de­struc­tion of the an­i­mal if not claimed with­in a spec­i­fied time pe­ri­od.

Sec­tions 15 and 16 per­tain to dan­ger­ous dogs, to the ex­tent that the max­i­mum penal­ty in­curred for own­ing any dan­ger­ous, fe­ro­cious or ra­bid dog which is not prop­er­ly muz­zled and is per­mit­ted to go at large is a fine of$200 or one month's im­pris­on­ment.In ad­di­tion, any per­son who fails to com­ply with the Mag­is­trate's or­der to keep the dog un­der prop­er con­trol is li­able to a fine of $40 for every day dur­ing which the own­er fails to com­ply there­with.But be­ware: the Mag­is­trate re­tains the au­thor­i­ty to or­der the dog be de­stroyed if it ap­pears that the dog is dan­ger­ous.The death penal­ty for "dan­ger­ous" dogs al­ready ex­ists, ac­cord­ing to the above Act, but does not ap­pear to be prop­er­ly en­forced and seems to not hin­der peo­ple from own­ing them or from be­ing care­less in their con­fine­ment and care, in­clud­ing so­cial­i­sa­tion and train­ing.

How is "jus­tice" to be ob­tained by tak­ing the life of an in­no­cent an­i­mal? These an­i­mals are in­deed in­no­cent be­cause they are sim­ply do­ing what is with­in their na­ture. Are we so above the laws of na­ture that we as­sume all dogs lose their in­her­it­ed wild traits and live to serve us? An­i­mals nei­ther abide by nor re­spect the laws en­stat­ed by man. Leg­is­la­tion should there­fore ex­ist to rep­ri­mand hu­mans, not the an­i­mals we claim to have tamed.These dogs should all be as­sessed by a qual­i­fied an­i­mal be­hav­iourist. The re­sults of the tem­pera­ment test­ing will de­ter­mine whether the dogs can be re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed and re-homed; or whether it is in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty to eu­thanise the dogs.Killing an an­i­mal be­cause it fol­lowed its in­stinct may sat­is­fy your thirst for re­venge, but this ac­tion will solve noth­ing. It is the own­er who is re­spon­si­ble for the shed­ding of the blood.