Rottweilers: a devil dog or man's best friend?
Recent attacks by rottweilers, including the death of a 13-month-old boy, have increased their vicious reputation. But is it the fault of the dogs - or the people who own them?
On a wind-blasted fold of the North Pennine Moors, not far from a branch of the Priory, the refuge for troubled celebrities, is a place where dogs go to be rehabilitated. Bleakholt Animal Sanctuary serves as a home for 110 unwanted dogs: nine are deemed beyond help, nine are undergoing rehab, the other 92 have been passed as safe to return to human society.
Each week Suzanne Holding, a pet behaviourist, tests the progress of the inmates. Among them are two rottweilers: Sally and Ally, representatives of a breed whose reputation as fearsome creatures has lately been burnished by a series of savage attacks.
The death of 13-month-old Archie-Lee Hirst, killed by the rottweiler his grandparents kept in their yard, was followed by reports of other rottweiler attacks that weekend. Earlier in December a kennelmaid lost her arm in a gruesome mauling by a rottweiler that she was exercising: proof for many that this was an unpredictable breed that could “suddenly turn” on anyone, even people caring for it.
Statistics for dogbites are not broken down by breed in the UK - studies in the US have shown that increases in rottweiler attacks have correlated only with the rising numbers kept as pets. “You see more bites by yellow labradors than any other dog,” says Neil Martin, manager of Bleakholt Animal Sanctuary, “because there are more of them and people treat them as teddy bears.”
Rottweilers have become less popular in recent years: the number registered with the Kennel Club has dropped by more than 2,000 to 4,257 last year. Overall the Pet Foods Manufacturers Association estimates there are 100,000 in the UK. Even if there are proportionally fewer rottweiler bites, the dogs do more damage. They typically weigh between 6st and 8st and “their jaws are phenomenally efficient”, Martin says.
The other problem for the breed, as he sees it, is “the moron brigade”, which buys them for their perceived dangerous qualities. He often rescues rottweilers named Tyson, or Bruno, or Major: dogs with fighting names. “Dogs are faithful animals,” he says.“If their pack leader - their owner - is aggressive, they are going to be aggressive,” he says.
In aroom at the sanctuary, Holding, 48, and fellow pet behaviourist, Jenny Harter, 24, test the temperament of Sally and Ally. Harter rushes at Sally holding a dummy child, arms outstretched; she sits beside the dog holding a small doll, mimicking the sounds of a baby crying; she dresses up in a mackintosh and hat for the “stranger test” and she pulls away a bowl of dog food using a plastic hand. Sally passes all the tests with flying colours and hopeful glances at the high shelf to which the bowl of food was removed.
Ally appears fine until the plastic hand taps his bowl. He lurches and clamps his jaws around it, shaking it and growling. “He has ‘food aggression' issues”, Martin says. Holding is reluctant to attempt the baby-doll test as she fears he will interpret the sound of crying as “prey” and try to eat it.
Such “issues” are not specific to his breed, however. After the two rottweilers we meet Harry, an English cocker spaniel. “We all thought Harry was good as gold,” says Martin. Harry had ignored the food, but at the sight of the hand he explodes with rage, leaping forward, knocking over the bowl to shake and bite the plastic flesh. His former owner was an elderly lady who is now in care. It was a loving relationship, but Harry felt that he was in charge when it came to meals.
Ally the rottweiler and Harry the fearsome cocker spaniel are in rehab: their trainer feeds them a spoonful at a time, teaching them not to bite the hand that feeds them. Martin is looking for a suitable home for Sally. Though she will make an excellent family pet, Martin will insist that the new owners have experience with dogs. “I wouldn't let them have a rottweiler if they had never had a dog before,” he says.
You need to have them trained
“Licensing would be a start,” says Kimberly MacDonald, 43, a rottweiler breeder from Wiltshire. “People think they can bring these dogs up leaving them in the back garden. It doesn't work. They have to be used to people, you have to take them to training clubs and out in public from an early age.”
Walking into MacDonald's living room for the first time can be alarming: she has four rottweilers (one has died since), the product of four generations of breeding. Her son Alex, 6, walks among them like a farmer in a field of bullocks. A Great Swiss mountain dog was in the kitchen. “It's the cat you have to watch out for,” she says.
A rottweiler raised without rules, left alone to guard a yard, might become aggressive, but a dog is also born with a certain character. “You shouldn't be breeding if you haven't got the right temperament,” she says. She has seen problems even at the top level. “I saw a dog belonging to a top breeder. His whole body language was telling me something wasn't right.
He bit a small child at a show about a year ago. The mother was persuaded not to go to court. It later bit a judge.” She says that there have been other instances of judges being attacked, that even when a character test is imposed some breeders know how to get around it. Meanwhile, “in the past ten years we have seen a lot of new people in the breed”,
she says. That is not counting “the people who breed hundreds of puppies to sell for £250 a time.
“The majority of these attacks you don't know where the dog came from, or they got them from someone in Loot, or from a puppy farm.” As well as licensing, she would like to see more council dog wardens, checking where and how dogs are kept and mandatory training classes for working breeds: rottweilers, German shepherds, dobermans. “The Kennel Club can do more,” she says. “Ask relevant questions, stop accepting registrations from people who don't character-test and demand health screening. If this does not stop every single rottweiler attack, it will be a start.”
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Rottweilers: a devil dog or man's best friend? - Times Online