Camden News: Welfare crisis | 'status dogs' | RSPCA | Breeding of bull terriers

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Camden News - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 18 December 2008

Police and RSPCA inspectors take control of two dogs at the Maygrove Road raid on Thursday

Welfare crisis over ‘status’ dogs

Breeding bull terriers ‘for fashion’ is likely to cause anti-social behaviour

THE breeding of “status” bull terrier dogs is creating an “overpopulation crisis” and prompting serious welfare concerns, experts warned after a raid by the
RSPCA in West Hampstead on Thursday.
A woman was arrested and two dogs were confiscated when police and RSPCA inspectors served a warrant on a flat in Maygrove Road at 8am, after reports from neighbours of mistreatment.
Hampstead-based PC Mark Garner said neighbours had raised concerns that the dogs were kept in the block’s communal gardens and that a suspect had been “beating them around the head with a chain, punching them, kicking them, and throwing them around the garden”.
Officers found narrow cages in the garden and what RSPCA Chief Inspector Jan Eachus called “extremely poor conditions”, but no signs of violent abuse.
The dogs, bull terrier puppies which inspectors estimated were about five months old, will remain in kennels until tests can be conducted to establish whether they are “pitbull types”, which would make them illegal under the Dangerous Dogs Act.
The RSPCA will also assess whether they should be allowed back to their owners after Chief Inspector Eachus alleged that the dogs, who had no food, water or bedding, were being neglected under the terms of the Animal Welfare Act.
The alleged neglect was also reported by inspectors from the Mayhew Animal Home, a charity which carries out welfare work in Camden from its Harrow Road base.
The Mayhew’s animal welfare inspector Claire Harper warned: “There is an overpopulation crisis with Staffies and bull terriers – because of fashion, people will take on animals when they don’t know anything about that animal.
“These dogs are status dogs, but they live for 15 years and should be a family pet. Keeping a dog as a status dog is more likely to cause anti-social behaviour with neighbours and housing problems.”

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