KEY POINTS:
In the wake of two dog attacks, one fatal, in less than a week, we might all be forgiven for sighing and saying "What, again?". But the real surprise, of course, is that such attacks don't happen more often than they do.
Virginia Ohlson, the Murupara woman who
died after being savaged by her nephew's dogs last weekend, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But we have the right to be outraged at that fact. We are entitled to demand to know why a woman walking down the street can be savaged so severely that she dies. We deserve to be told how it can be that, in a civilised country, an 85-year-old at her local supermarket can be bitten on the face by a rottweiler cross.
Here's why: however much dog-lovers and dog-owners may engage in special pleading, dogs are only a small genetic step removed from the wild beasts that, an evolutionary eyeblink ago, roamed in packs and killed anything incapable of killing them. The difference between a well-trained dog and an untrained one is one of degree, not quality: the former is less likely, by a indeterminate quantum, to attack another animal, including a human, that it comes across, but it is at all times within an unpredictable whisker of doing so. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded.
The owners of registered, trained and obedient pooches may grouse when dog rangers fine them for having their darlings off the leash in public. They may claim that Tootsie wouldn't harm a fly but they can't know that and - more to the point - human beings, including children going about their lawful business cannot either.
Dog owners whose pets menace or bite are fond of saying "(s)he's never done that before". This offensively implies that it's somehow the human's fault for getting bitten, but it's a poor justification anyway. A human who attacked without warning would not be excused with such an explanation and the claim that "you must have done something to provoke him".
Dog owners may counter this argument by saying that the dog is an animal, without the intellect or self-control we expect of humans. But in doing so they would complete the perfect circle of the argument against themselves: unless they believe - and many seem to - that dogs should have rights not available to humans, the case is closed.
Prime Minister Helen Clark has asked officials to explore the idea of toughening the dog-control laws that were beefed up after the 2003 attack on a seven-year-old in an Auckland park. But laws are effective only to the extent that they are enforced. Who would observe parking restrictions in the absence of parking wardens? Who would observe drink-driving laws if there were no random breath-testing? As police have repeatedly remarked, the effectiveness of the campaign against drink-driving is directly proportional to offenders' perception of the likelihood that they will be caught.
So it is with dog control. The dogs that roam free and menace or attack people are disproportionately unregistered, which is to say that they belong to people who have displayed their contempt for the law. Murupara locals say that the dogs that killed Mrs Ohlson were notoriously troublesome but that they were afraid of complaining for fear of reprisals. Meanwhile, we are told, the town, in which menacing dogs are a chronic problem, has one dog-control officer.
Bad dogs are typically a bigger problem in poorer neighbourhoods where there are many calls on local authority funding. The PM should forget about further toughening the law. She should boost funding so that local authorities - or even the police - can enforce the dog-control laws we already have. We are entitled to be safe from such attacks.