[Michael Romanos]

Debbie has of course made good points. My dilemma is that I come from stance that it is almost always solely the owner who should be prosecuted harshly and not the dog. There are many who say put down the offending dog- I say in many cases, retrain, rehouse the dog but send the owner to prison and lumped with a hefty fine and bar him/her from ever owning an animal, ever again.

Having said that, there are breeds of dogs we as a human race, don't really need. There are at least 332 pure breeds in the world. Why cotton on to breeds who have a comprehensively terrible recorded reputation. These breeds are just adding fuel to the flames when under the thumb of irresponsible and destructive owners.

Of course it is crazy that a person can intimidate a dog but if the same dog then 'intimidates' him/her at the same time, then the dog can be put down (at worse) and the intimidating person who has all the rights, is let off the hook. It is possible for this to happen in NZ. My nasty neighbour complained to both the police and the dog control authorities that Taylor had intimidated them. Of course it was rubbish and trumped up. I asked for an explanation of intimidation but never got a response and the matter was dropped anyway through lack of evidence though the police said they would 'investigate' further. That was about two years ago.

The four breeds banned in NZ are American Pit Bull Terrier, Dogo Argentino, Brazilian Fila and Japanese Tosa. This came into force about four years ago so it was too late to prevent a host of Pit Bulls being imported and bred but we had very few if any of the other three breeds. You'll find that much the same banning applies in Australia.