Andrew Dickens: The devastation of dog attacks

Spent all weekend waiting for more details about the death by dog in the Bay of Plenty.   This story upset me greatly. We heard about the victim.  A cheeky cheery 4-year-old kid. His family say he had a little mischief in his smile, a little wid in his heart and a heart full of cuteness.   We heard a statement from the Marae that something had happened suggesting this was in Maori circles. For a while I thought it was an incident on the Marae but it wasn’t.   We heard another person was injured and presumably they were trying to save the boy.  On social media I saw claims that the boy may have razzed the dogs but that’s not the point. That’s victim blaming.   The thing that always gets me on these stories is that dogs should not kill people.   Even though 4 people have died at the teeth of dogs in the past 5 years.  Dogs are man’s best friend. Dogs are a useful tool. But dogs should never kill humans. The way robots are programmed to never kill humans.  Even the dogs who’s jobs are to be security for humans should not kill other humans even if the humans are bad.   The only dogs who kill humans are dogs who are owned or controlled by humans who do not know how to control their dogs.  And if they have dogs who are not controllable, they are humans who don’t realise the threat those dogs pose. Therefore, they should surrender those dogs before bad stuff happens.  And when these things happen the concerned start raising rules and regulations that the bad owners ignore and the only thing they do is irritate and criminalise good owners.   Any dogs that kill that can be traced to an owner means that owner must face a custodial sentence.   Because your weapon just killed an innocent child. I don’t know how you live with yourself and don’t you dare defend the dog. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.