UK – NEWS AND OPINION: Lots of commotion and disturbing shouting to demand that someone hits the dog accompany this rare video from TikTok of an aggressive dog believed to be an American bully attacking police horses in an unprovoked manner.
My immediate thought on seeing this video is that this was a dog that was dangerously out of control and the owner should be prosecuted under the Dangerous Dogs Act. However, we will wait to see what the police do about it but we do know that the dog has been seized and is currently in police custody.
The dog attacked and injured two police horses on Wednesday afternoon in Victoria Park which I believe is in east London.
The dog’s name is Coco and one of the attacked horses is Urbane. The attack lasted five minutes. The dog’s owner, Hakan Niyazi, who should be somewhere in the video but we don’t know who he is, looked on. He is a college student who has owned Coco for a year. He said that the horses were to blame because his dog was intimidated by them.
He told The Sun: “She felt threatened”. The owner said that his dog is “so friendly”. He also said that nothing like this had happened before.
Witnesses said that the attack was shocking and scary. At the moment no arrests have been made despite what I stated above. The video has been circulating on TikTok in various forms.
As you can see bystanders tried to intervene as the dog bit at the legs and chest of the horses. Personally, I am a little surprised that the police officer on the horse did not jump off and try and stop the dog. Perhaps they were frightened and that would be understandable but the police officer was reliant upon bystanders to do this job. That seems remiss of the officer on the face of it.
After all the attack lasted for five minutes, quite a considerable time for the officers to do something tangible to prevent or curtail the attack. The police did not cover themselves in glory it seems to me.
Added points:
- American bully dog has killed one adult person and 2 children over the past 2 years
- Surge in dog ownership over Covid resulted in too many dog owners not being adequately prepared to provide good standard dog caregiving resulting in more attacks on other animals and people
- American bulldog originally bred to bait bulls but that has been bred out over 100 years it said
- People selecting the wrong dog to adopt
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