How The Dangerous Dogs Act got Defanged in ’97

The 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act has hit the news again as “XL Bully” (a type of Pit-Bull cross), becomes officially banned in England & Wales. Bully enthusiasts nationwide had been convinced that at the stroke of midnight, thousands of Bullies would be euthanised at once by complicit kennels and dog-catchers.

Maybe, if the Act had any real bite.

Those dogs spared the hand of Death will instead live out their days muzzled, neutered (like most dogs), microchipped (like most dogs) and always leashed when in public (like most dogs). These banned bullies must be registered on an “Index of Exempted Dogs“, shall not be gifted, sold or bred, and err, that’s about it. Most of these restrictions are already followed as-norm by responsible dog owners.

The UK used to euthanise banned dogs, that was the 1991 Act’s original goal. While the original intention of the “Index of Exempted Dogs” was to grandfather in banned dogs present within the UK at time of the Act’s commencement, so as to prevent the Act requiring the immediate deaths of hundreds of previously law-abiding pets at once.

These exempted dogs would be allowed to live out their lives in the bondages described above, until the number of living dogs on the index (originally 5,223) dwindled away to nothing; “The intention was eventual elimination of the population“. Banned dogs discovered after the 30 November 1991 would simply be destroyed at the soonest convenience.

However, in good UK Government fashion, this whole mechanism was turned on its head 6 years later in 1997. An amendment now allowed the index to be expanded again. Allowing banned dogs to escape destruction by joining the index instead, the Act had been defanged.

This shifted the requirement of good-faith ownership from a small limited portion of dog owners who had found themselves with banned dogs after adoption, to a new unlimited amount of possible owners who would often knowingly acquire banned dogs at adoption. The entire dynamic had changed, but the requirements and trust put in the owners remained the same.

Violent Pit-Bulls attacks were the catalyst for creating the original Act and banning of the type, now thirty years on, their descendants join them for the same reason. 1997’s trust in owners of banned dogs to self-police and not breed the animals clearly hasn’t been honoured and it’s cost people’s lives decades on. Proscribing XL Bullies the same way, without changing the underlying framework won’t yield too different a result.