Dog sought in attack likely to have done it before: police

The dog that ripped half the face off a seven-year-old girl in Auckland last week would almost certainly have attacked before, a police dog handler said today.

Sergeant Mike Pederson said the dog should be destroyed and the owner brought before the courts.

Mr Pederson, who also trains dogs, said the dog that mauled Carolina Anderson in Cox's Bay Reserve on Friday was a dangerous weapon and beyond salvation.

"I guarantee it is not the first time that dog has done it," he said. "There is no alternative. It has to be destroyed."

Mr Pederson said dog owners did not seem to realise dogs were 75 per cent wild animals.

If some owners could not get dogs with a reputation for viciousness such as rotweillers, they would get another dog such as a German shepherd or a labrador and train it to be vicious, he said.

"Any dog has the propensity to do that sort of thing, irrelevant of its breed."

Mr Pederson said it was ironic that most bull mastiffs, a breed with a bad reputation, had an excellent temperament.

However, all dogs needed to be kept on a lead at all times in public.

"I don't know how many times I tell people to keep them on a lead.

"People think a dog can walk alongside them on a footpath like a human. But dogs have no concept of footpaths and roads and things."

Removing the bad breeds would not solve the problem.

"It would get some of the nasty bloodlines out of the country and that has got to be a good thing, but educating the owners is of primary importance."

He said his experience of "proper American pitbulls" -- another breed with a bad reputation -- was that they were "fantastic animals around people".

But he would never trust any dog to be totally safe around people -- even his own dogs.

Dogs had similar social patterns to people which meant people often thought of dogs as being human, with human personalities, an attitude known as anthropomorphism.

"We tend to think dogs think the same way as we do. They don't.

"They are simply a wild animal which has been 25 per cent domesticated and that is all they are."

Dogs with a bad temperament or a propensity to bite or attack would show up at an early age but many owners often did not want to admit that.

- NZPA