I would like to ad­dress the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing the Dan­ger­ous Dog Act that is to be­come law on Au­gust 1. Even though I agree it is a good thing that the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to con­trol in­ci­dences of dog at­tacks, I strong­ly dis­agree with pa­ra­me­ters of the act it­self since, in my opin­ion, this is be­ing viewed from a bi­ased per­spec­tive.

What about the peo­ple who ac­tu­al­ly care for their dogs and are re­spon­si­ble in han­dling them? What about the peo­ple who are afraid and would eu­thanise their dogs or let them run free? The act was not well thought-out and needs to be amend­ed. Peo­ple judge pit bulls and oth­er breeds with­out even un­der­stand­ing them. Like I al­ways say, peo­ple fear what they don't un­der­stand and they def­i­nite­ly fear and there­fore mis­un­der­stand these beau­ti­ful crea­tures.

I don't have pit bulls my­self but I do have oth­er strong breeds. I have four Rot­tweil­ers and I re­cent­ly got a Cane Cor­so. They are the most lov­ing crea­tures ever. My dogs could be con­sid­ered by breed specifics as pow­er­ful ag­gres­sive-type dogs. How­ev­er, I have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed my neigh­bour's two pothounds be­ing the ag­gres­sors in a dog fight with two large-breed dogs.

Hav­ing said this, I be­lieve it is ex­treme­ly bi­ased to con­demn the three dogs men­tioned in the Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act 2000 since any type of dog can be con­sid­ered dan­ger­ous. Peo­ple have to un­der­stand that once a dog is treat­ed a cer­tain way, it would have a cer­tain tem­pera­ment. I spend hours each day tak­ing care of my five dogs as if they were my own chil­dren. With the love and re­spect I put in­to car­ing for these an­i­mals, I am giv­en back love, re­spect and loy­al­ty.

The pothounds men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly could have eas­i­ly at­tacked some­one walk­ing by at the time, but yet the pit bull is still placed cen­tre stage. I do agree with the process of li­cens­ing your dog, but this must go for all dog own­ers of any type of dog, thus hope­ful­ly pro­mot­ing re­spon­si­ble own­er­ship. Rather than elim­i­nat­ing spe­cif­ic breeds, this would try to pro­mote re­spon­si­ble own­ers.

It is not that any­thing is wrong with try­ing to put laws in place to con­trol cer­tain sit­u­a­tions, but the fric­tion oc­curs in defin­ing the pa­ra­me­ters of the laws. Yes, laws are made to gov­ern so that we can all live in a con­trolled so­ci­ety but I al­ways say with every­thing comes bal­ance. Laws al­so need to in­cor­po­rate those who share our lives with us. As a cur­rent vet­eri­nary stu­dent, I be­lieve it is one of my du­ties to speak for those who can­not speak for them­selves.

Siew Leng Achong

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