British owners of aggressive dogs to face fines and ‘dogbos’

Dog owners who allow their pets to snarl at strangers, threaten postal workers, damage garden fences or aggressively chase cats will face fines of up to £2,500 or have their animals taken away under laws that come into force on Monday.

Police, council officials and social housing landlords will be able to issue community protection notices, or “dogbos”, to force the owners of nuisance animals to take steps to control their behaviour.

Measures could include attending behavioural classes, keeping their dogs muzzled or on a leash, strengthening garden fencing, or having their animals neutered or microchipped.

Owners who do not comply with an order will face a £100 on-the-spot fine or criminal prosecution, with a maximum fine of £2,500, or up to £20,000 for businesses using guard dogs.

The animal welfare minister Lord De Mauley said: “Police and local authorities will now have more powers to demand that irresponsible dog owners take steps to prevent attacks before they occur. This is on top of the tougher prison sentences we introduced earlier this year for owners who allow their dogs to attack people and assistance dogs.”

“Dogbos” could be issued if a postal worker was regularly chased off a property or became alarmed by growling when delivering letters through a door.

Similarly, owners who let their dogs chase cats in a way that forced neighbours to keep them indoors, or let their animal loose in a park and failed to bring it under control, could face a penalty.

However, the shadow animal welfare minister Angela Smith said the measures fell far short of what was needed to tackle irresponsible dog ownership and dangerous dogs.

owners who let their dogs chase cats in a way that forced neighbours to keep them indoors

I hope this only applies if the cat is chased on its own property- If the dog isn't permitted to chase strays trespassing on his own property this is demented. Dogs are territorial creatures, and no dog worth having would permit a cat to run in his yard without chasing it.

The animal welfare minister Lord De Mauley

[ môl ] verb

verb: maul · third person present: mauls · past tense: mauled · past participle: mauled

(of an animal) wound (a person or animal) by scratching and tearing:

"the herdsmen were mauled by lions"

synonyms: savage · attack · tear to pieces · lacerate · claw · scratch

I certainly don’t want cat leash laws, I am for as few laws as possible- this whole “problem” is absurd. There is in fact no problem here, unless truly aggressive dogs are chasing the cats on the cat owners property- then it’s time for a neighborly chat, not a new law. Cats have been chased by dogs for two thousand years, it’s no big deal- probably fun for both. Sometimes the dog get’s scratched, sometimes the cat gets bit, but that’s probably half the fun. Yeah, sometimes dogs get blinded, sometimes cat’s get killed, but they are at heart wild animals so what do you expect. If the cat owner is that concerned about it, then maybe they could leash their cat, or keep it in the house, but who actually cares? I grew up with cats and dogs, and the cats got torn up far more by other cats- not to mention natural predators who even occasionally killed cats- than by dogs. Either way it was the cat’s own fault for leaving the property, and we would never have a grievance with a neighbor even when their dog killed the cats. Now if their dogs came on our property and were behaving aggressively, that would be a big problem. Back then they would get a warning or two, then the dogs would be shot. We had livestock, and our own dogs and we nor anyone else in the area would tolerate aggressive dogs running on their property. Note that I grew up in the country on quite a few acres.

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