Anon 2,
The fact that you are somewhat frightened by the appearance or whereabouts of dogs in your vicinity should not be the basis of rational argument to ban all dogs from view. Using the media inflated, occasional news that someone has been attacked by a dog is also a pretty lame point and certainly, by banning all dogs as per your desire, is even for the casual observer unfeasible.

Dogs for the blind, carer dogs as found in hospices and the like, working farm dogs, sniffer dogs, search and rescue dogs, would you be content to ban all of these as well? How about dogs that are companions for people? There's an awful lot of folk out there who get a great deal of satisfaction from having a pet around the house. If your eutopian view of banishing all dogs once and for all is to be put forward as a serious debate, then for heavens sake have the good judgement to think the idea through.

I appreciate your fear of dogs and I spend time with people such as yourself overcoming those fears. Yes, there is the occasional dog that is vicious but you are more likely to venture out in the evening and get beaten up by a bunch of thugs,, the human type, then you ever are to be attacked by dogs. To use the media hype as per your style, there may be a report of a dog attack every couple of weeks but every day there are several attacks by humans.

It would be right to see proper regulation made for the ownership of animals but there is no point as the authorities of this land only tend to like the headline grabbing part of creating popular and sensationalistic rules. Enforcing them is something they never consider and when it isn't, those same authorities lay low only to poke their heads up and say the police are to blame for not enforcing the rules.

I suggest you go overcome your fear of dogs at the earliest moment and get your rational into perspective.

Anonymous 3 needed this 'Off the Record'

There are no dangerous dogs, only dangerous (and ignorant) owners. Dogs need training, companionship, proper nutrition, and regular exercise. A huge majority of dogs in this country get none of these, and sooner or later the dog will show signs of lack of these essentials. He will bark, chew, urinate and defecate in inappropriate places, and generaly show signs of an unhappy dog. Unfortunately everyone wants a quick fix these days, so the dog is blamed for the human's failure to care properly for the animal.

To drive a car these days, one has to take a test. Why not make it compulsary for owner and dog to attend a training course (with exam) at the end of it. Failure in the exam means more training required. When dog and owner are judged to be competent then maybe a licence is awarded, and entered on the (compulsary) microchip. This is then easily checked by police/dog wardens etc. We already have a network of courses running the Good Citizen Scheme, managed by the Kennel Club, would it be so much more difficult to expand that?