In 2015, my son Ryan, who was six at the time, a couple of his school friends, another two mums and I went for a walk near to where we live on a semi-rural country lane with houses on it. We were all being very quiet, because we were intent on picking chestnuts off the ground, when from nowhere, a white English bull terrier came running out of the trees and knocked Ryan to the ground. The dog covered his whole body, and it was followed very quickly by another English bull terrier, which ran right into him, too. It all happened very quickly.
The scene was carnage. A man who lived in one of the houses nearby came out to help us get the dogs off, and when we did so, we noticed right away that Ryan’s ear was off the side of his head. A large chunk was missing and the ear was hanging off. Obviously I was screaming hysterically, while the owner was in the background, unaware of what was going on and shouting out, “Don’t worry—the dogs won’t touch you.” There was blood everywhere, and children were running about screaming, as they would be.
The situation quickly escalated. We called the police and an ambulance, Ryan was blue-lighted to the Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley and the police began to deal with the incident. I was with Ryan the whole time at hospital. When we arrived at Paisley, we were told that we had go straight to the children’s hospital in Glasgow, and we were blue-lighted there instead. Ryan had emergency surgery to attach his ear to his head and close up the wounds, but the top of his ear could not be reattached, because there are no blood vessels in that part of the body. As a result, he was left disfigured. He had bites to his hip and elbow, teeth marks embedded in the top of his forehead and cuts and grazes all over his body from being dragged about the ground.
After the trauma of the attack, I was left frustrated because I felt that the police were not helping us out. At the time, the police took statements from my friends who had been there, but they were trying to get and contain their own kids and did not fully see what was going on. The police decided at the scene to retain one dog, which was white and covered in blood; they did not retain the other one, because they said that there was not sufficient evidence that it had actually bitten my son. However, because both dogs covered Ryan’s full body, you could not actually see which of them was doing the biting. They knew that the white one was involved only because you could see the blood all over it; the other dog was dark brown and black, so you would not have been able to see bloodstains on it.
The owner of the dogs said that he would give the white dog over, because it had behavioural issues, particularly with pram wheels, bike wheels and car wheels. Whenever it came into close contact with those things, it went berserk. My friend had a nine-month-old in a pram, and Ryan was standing next to it, but that is the only indication that I have had as to why he got picked. He regularly asks me, “Why did the dog attack me and no one else? I wasn’t running about, shouting or screaming.” He was doing none of the things that people say not to do when a dog runs up to you.
I was very frustrated with the police, and I let them know my frustrations. I did not get my statement taken until later on that night, and they did not want to speak to Ryan at all. He was the victim—he was the one who was lying on the ground—and so he should have been the one to tell them what had happened. I and my husband ended up writing to an MSP, Annabel Goldie, who lived—and still lives—in the area, and she put a complaint into the Renfrewshire police. As a result of that, things were escalated, and we were visited by the police, who stated why they had no control over these things. Basically, they told us that they had no authority to do anything when dogs attack people. They badly wanted to retain the other dog, but they had no control over that. Because of that, I have put more complaints into the police, but we have not really got too far with that.
We were also visited by the dog wardens. They took a statement from us, but a week later, they phoned to ask whether they had left the statement at our house, because they could not find it. That, too, was a huge frustration. I phoned them back to see whether they had found it; apparently they had, but I do not know that for sure. I felt that that whole process was a bit farcical, to be honest.
The dog owner was charged and taken to court, and the white dog was taken away and destroyed. The second dog was given a control order, which meant that it could not be walked where we live in Bishopton, it could not be off a lead, it had to be muzzled and if anyone came to the door—whether they were a postman, someone with a delivery or a member of the public—it had to be contained. It could not be anywhere near the front door or in any public places in Bishopton, but the owner moved away to a completely different area. Nobody knew where he had gone, so the control order was never followed up and the dog wardens could not get hold of him to do the six-monthly check that they were supposed to do.
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The dog owner himself was given the maximum community service, and the judge said that he was very close to being jailed. I felt that he should have been jailed, because he was a very irresponsible owner, but he escaped a jail sentence because he handed over the white dog.
What are my feelings about what the law should be? Too many dog owners in this country act as if their dog were a baby or a child—an extension of their family. I understand that to a certain extent, but too many people have dogs that they cannot control. Those dogs should not be pets, should not be in houses and should not be left with children. I would like to see dogs being kept on leads in all public places—it happens in other countries, so why not here? My son cannot go to public parks now, because everywhere we go he is terrified of seeing a dog off the lead. He has needed more counselling as a result, which is something that we are trying to solve as a family.
I also feel that the people should not have these kinds of dogs—there should be controls on them and stricter guidelines on the repercussions of dog attacks. I am very strongly against the one free bite rule. How do we know whether a dog has bitten before? People in the community where the brown dog is now living do not know what has happened or what the dog has been involved in. Why should we let that happen? Also, all owners should pay for a licence to have a dog. They should not be able to go on Facebook or Gumtree and buy a dog, or get it for nothing, without knowing anything about it.
The trauma for my family is on-going. Ryan has been left with a disfigurement. He will have to undergo another three operations to remove cartilage from his sternum, attach it to his ear and rebuild his ear with a skin graft. Those will be three separate operations in Edinburgh; we live in Bishopton, so it is a bit of an upheaval for us. There has been a traumatic effect on his entire childhood: he does not want to go to places where he should be striving to go as a little boy. It has affected our younger children, who were not there at the time but now have a huge fear of dogs. It has affected me, too: I had a lot of time off work, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and had to go through cognitive behavioural therapy. All of that treatment is funded by the NHS. Why should that strain have to be put on the NHS because of one irresponsible person who should not have owned those dogs?