I write with ref­er­ence to the ar­ti­cle in the Ex­press with the head­line "Put Rot­tweil­er on dan­ger­ous dog list."First off let me make it clear that I am no ex­pert or pro­fes­sion­al in the mat­ter, and I speak on­ly in my own opin­ion based on the ar­ti­cles that have been cir­cu­lat­ing re­gard­ing the maul­ing of the ba­by boy Maleek Khan.

Af­ter hear­ing what hap­pened I must say it is a sheer tragedy. No one should have to wit­ness or go through such a trau­mat­ic event and my deep­est con­do­lences go out to the fam­i­ly.

A few things I find a bit un­fair about the en­tire af­fair though–based on the pic­ture that's be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed with the "dan­ger­ous dog" I must say the an­i­mal looks ne­glect­ed, deeply sad­dened and mal­nour­ished. It could just be guilt (as an­i­mals have as much or even more feel­ings than hu­mans do) but has any­one done an in­ves­ti­ga­tion as to if the dog was be­ing prop­er­ly cared for?

No doubt the child was high­light­ed as the vic­tim here, all rights giv­en of course, but was the dog al­so a vic­tim of years of ne­glect? Peo­ple need to re­mem­ber that just like hu­mans, an­i­mals as well need love, at­ten­tion, care and food.

Hav­ing a pet does not mean caging them or hav­ing them chained to a fence for the rest of their lives. No. Any cred­i­ble source will tell you the amount of time, ef­fort and work that goes in­to car­ing for an an­i­mal, and such an­i­mal will on­ly ex­hib­it char­ac­ter­is­tics or be­hav­iour based on the treat­ment it gets.

Al­though some an­i­mals are fe­ro­cious by na­ture, this can be al­tered with prop­er train­ing and love. This how­ev­er does not ap­ply to the very rare cas­es of an­i­mals get­ting all the right care and sim­ply at­tack­ing for ab­solute­ly no rea­son at all; or just be­cause "it's in his blood," and I'm not say­ing this is not what tran­spired with Maleek, but once the an­i­mal (Sim­ba) had re­ceived the right at­ten­tion, maybe, just maybe, this would not have hap­pened at all.

Al­so, peo­ple are quick to make calls for dogs to be put on a "dan­ger list" but the on­ly thing this does is in­tro­duce a fine to the in­di­vid­u­als who own them. Since cer­tain dogs have ten­den­cies to strike at­tacks with­out warn­ing why not in­tro­duce oth­er re­quire­ments in ad­di­tion to a hefty tax, such as a prop­er dog care and manda­to­ry train­ing cours­es, etc?

It's eas­i­er to blame the an­i­mal, but some­times peo­ple need to put aside their emo­tions and think ra­tio­nal­ly if they did some­thing to war­rant an in­ci­dent and if they could have tak­en steps to pre­vent it.Noth­ing pos­i­tive ever comes from a death but in the case of poor in­no­cent Maleek, I hope his sto­ry serves as an eye-open­er for own­ers of "dan­ger­ous dogs."

Aman­da Khan,

South Oropouche