I WAS very, very angry to read the headlines (Oct 9) about the little boy of eight who had been mauled.
Yet again the name of the Staffordshire bull terrier is slandered. These dogs are amazing and friendly and I should know as I own two of them and have two children, 12 and eight.
The breed should never be branded. It's always the owners at fault,
regardless of the breed.
I do appreciate these dogs were bred to fight, but that was years and years ago and over time the breed has been bred because of its good nature and its nickname of being the nanny dog.
It's the silly owners that cause the problems with any breed and mostly it is someone silly who provokes an attack.
I am fed up of reading these type of stories where people blame our dogs for things.
The dog that mauled this little boy was not a Staffordshire bull terrier but a crossbreed and unless they know for sure via DNA that it is a pure Staffie crossed with something else, why does the breed have to be mentioned?
Why can it not have been 'dog bites boy'.
But this is not what annoys me the most. What does that is the comment that the boy's mum makes. She stated the dog should be destroyed because it has attacked her child before and had heard that it had bitten other people too.
If this had happened before why did she let her little boy go around to play where she knew there was a dog that had bitten him?
Although I feel sorry for the little boy and what has happened to him, who can really say whether it was the dog's fault?
Mrs D Marshall, Southey Green Road, Sheffield 5THANK you to The Star and MP Angela Smith for raising the issue of 'Danger Dogs' September 24.
In this area, days do not start with pleasantries any more. They begin with and continue at times, to the sound of three dogs (two ex-guard dogs?) and their aggressive barking.
There is growing apprehension for public safety.
S Smith, Sheffield 11
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