Today, Explained - Man’s best friend banned in UK

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says his government will ban a type of dog called the American Bully XL — a relative of the pit bull. Political editor Tom McTague and writer Bronwen Dickey explain the complex politics and charged history of an iconic dog. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Miles Bryan, engineered by David Herman, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're listening on the radio, what you can see here is a group of people surrounding this dog, trying to wrestle the dog off somebody who had been attacked. We know that an 11-year-old girl was the first victim in this incident. An 11-year-old British girl named Anna Pawn survived an attack earlier this month by a dog that's believed to be an American Bully XL. 52-year-old Ian Price, who was also attacked by two dogs also believed to be bully XLs, also this month, did not survive. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak soon acted.

We will then ban the breed under the Dangerous Dogs Act and new laws will be in place by the end of the year. They're not a breed, but go on, Prime Minister. These dogs are dangerous. I want to reassure the public that we will take all necessary steps to keep people safe. Coming up, is a bully ban a legitimate response to these attacks? Or are bullies being bullied? Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.

Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. To understand what's happening in the UK, we often go to Tom McTague. Tom is a political editor of Unheard and a host of the podcast These Times. Tom, Rishi Sunak says he's going to ban a type of dog called the American Bully XL. What is going on?

Well, we've been having a lot of dog attacks, or it seems that we've been having a lot of dog attacks, or it seems that we've been having a lot of dog attacks over the last couple of years. Last weekend, 11-year-old Anna Pawn was attacked. The same dog went on to cause serious injuries to two men. It's kind of built up in the public imagination via social media. Why the hell is this being allowed to continue? Why are hugely unqualified, clearly incapable people allowed to own proven lethal weapons? And via legacy media, ordinary media, about what is going on.

Well, last year, 3,272 people needed reconstructive surgery after they'd been mauled by a dog, with 419 of those cases involving children aged four or under. And it seems to be a large proportion of these attacks are down to the American XL bully. XL bullies were involved in more than half of the fatal dog attacks in the UK over the last three years. Which is a kind of new breed from what we can all understand. And it's so new, in fact, that we haven't really identified it as a breed. And that is part of the problem.

So they're not recognised by dog associations such as the Kennel Club at the moment. So are we waiting for an exact definition of this breed? Yeah, exactly that. It's a real challenge. We don't know exactly what an XL bully is right now. So it's a really, really challenging situation to be in. It is not currently a breed defined in law. So this vital first step must happen fast. Okay, so you say it's relatively new. It's so new, it hasn't really been identified as a breed yet. When was it? It sounds strange asking this about a dog, and I know very little about dogs, but when was it created?

Was it created? How does this work? It's difficult, and a lot of the British media have been trying to sort of understand the origins of this dog. You know, it's a kind of fashionable symbol among, you know, certain groups in society. When you think about status dogs and who might have them, it's generally the stereotype that comes to mind, isn't it? Young boys, tattoos, low socioeconomic background, me. I mean, this is the thing with Britain. Everything is bound up in class, right? You know, you have certain dogs that certain types of people have. The middle classes have a certain dog. The working classes have a certain dog. Upper classes have a certain dog. They're a kind of signifier, I guess.

And this type of dog, the XL Bully, you will find it in inner cities and working class estates. And it's bound up with a kind of status symbol across the UK. It's not the kind of dog that you would see the royal family hanging around with, if you know what I mean. Yeah, she's the softest little bugger you'll ever meet in your life. Do you piss me off? Sometimes in a case like this, Tom, there will be one attack that is sort of seen as the ground zero, the ground zero incident. It appears online and then everybody's watching and it's like, OK, there have to be huge changes. You've said several times that there have been multiple attacks. Can you tell me about

them and what the public is actually seeing when an attack becomes very, very high profile? Yes. So there has been a debate about these dogs for the last couple of years, but it really seems to have grown in intensity over the last few weeks. And in that classic social media sense, where it seems to become overwhelming for the government, the pressure seems to just grow like a wave, and it's suddenly there's nothing they can do about it. But if you have a look at the statistics, there was a piece in The Guardian that was very good at explaining this, and it was saying six out of the 10 fatal dog attacks in the UK last year were linked to an XL bully dog, and three of the seven fatal attacks this year. So, I mean, I don't know in

US terms whether those numbers sound a lot, but I mean, 10 dog attacks that killed people in a year, that seems quite a high number to me here. Obviously, we're not as big in terms of population as the US. But once that starts to set into the public mind, then every subsequent attack becomes a kind of front page story or is all over social media. And that is what is happening now. So I've said hello to him, stroked him, and then Luna has put her left hand out to stroke him and then he's pushed her to the ground

and then he started attacking her face. And that's when I started getting the dog off her. I started hitting him, punching him. We had a thing called the Dangerous Dogs Act that has been in place since 1991 when you had a similar kind of outcry over a number of dogs and you had four types of dog that were banned back then in 1991. The Pipple Terrier, the Japanese Tozer, a Dogo Argentino and something called a Fila Brasileiro, which I don't know what they are. But that was after 11 serious attacks. Oh no, don't, please don't, don't take my dog.

When you go into a house and the children are crying as you take it away, yes, it is upsetting. We all like working with dogs. And to have to do this upsets you on occasions. So we're kind of back up to that kind of level that caused the original ban. And so that's the sort of context to think about it. So you've had this number of attacks that have kind of grown, linked to this particular breed. And then on top of that, you have these really emotive cases where you're talking about children. And as soon as children are being attacked, then this kind of raises up to a new level.

Yeah, I think we understand why the ban is happening. How will it actually work? How many of these dogs are there? And if you have one, what do you have to do now? Well, this is the million dollar question, really. And this is the reason the government was resisting including this breed in the Dangerous Dogs Act. So that's the mechanism for this ban. It's to add to those four breeds that we mentioned, and this new breed, and then say that that is is banned that is very difficult because you've already got lots of families with this dog and so people have loved the dog it's become a member of their family and it hasn't done anything wrong and so what do they do we need to stand up and fight this like

somehow like this is fucking ridiculous and if anyone thinks they're coming for my dogs, they're mistaken. Because I will fight for my dogs because they are perfect dogs. It goes down to the owners, not the fucking breed of the dogs. You're seeing some marches and things like that in parts of the country where people have this dog and saying, you know, what are you going to do, put down my dog, destroy it? Save our bully! Save our bullies! Save our bullies! Save our bullies! Save our bullies!

So I think this is what the government is working through now. They've almost gone at this policy the wrong way round. And this is another indicator of modern politics in that you feel this pressure from social media. You make an announcement that we are going to ban this and then you figure out how you're going to do it. Today I have tasked ministers to bring together police and experts to firstly define the breed of dog behind these attacks with a view to then outlawing it. So you're figuring out well how much compensation do you give to families whose dogs you destroy

or what requirements you put on them if they are to keep such a dog? And then the other really basic thing is how do you define this dog? What if a dog is kind of a part breed, a half breed of this American XL? Then what? Is that part of the ban or is that not part of the ban? I think it's very difficult. And actually, these are the reasons that the government was resisting it at first, but then felt that it couldn't resist it any longer. For groups that are opposed to this and not just on the grounds that, like, I love my dog and he's fine, what are they saying big picture? Well, they've got a very reasonable case.

You know, the RSPCA is the big kind of animal rights charity in Britain. But you also have other ones like the Kennel Club that I mentioned. And they make this argument that dogs should be judged on, in quotes, their deed, not their breed. And so they oppose a ban. Now, they oppose a ban because they're an animal rights charity. And so they don't want to see animals destroyed, killed, who haven't done anything wrong. Breed is not a reliable predictor of aggressive behaviour in dogs. Any dog has the potential to bite.

As we look to reduce dangerous dog incidents, we need solutions that promote responsible pet ownership. That is the essence of their argument. But it's coming up against those who say, well, they're essentially a dangerous weapon or they are something that, you know, you need to regulate and deal with like you would any other kind of weapon, knives, guns, those kind of things. And again, to sort of spell out the difference between the UK and the US, I guess, is that in the UK, lots of things are, you know, are banned. We already have this law that you can't have certain types of dogs.

So there is a kind of precedent for this. But you're seeing the kind of a clash of rights in which you're seeing sort of animal rights, people who are the dog owners themselves, and then people who are very scared about what's going to happen to their children, you know, just walking in the street if they, you know, if one of these dogs just gets off a lead. Tom McTague is the host of the podcast These Times. Coming up, what is it about pit bulls anyway? A lot of people are afraid of them. What's behind that?

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Over an American Icon. A few years into Bronwyn's career, she was on a journalism assignment, and she met a pitbull, and she was scared of the pit bull. And then she wondered, why was she so scared? I had heard that the only reason anyone would have a pit bull is if they were interested in dog fighting, that all pit bulls were fighting dogs, that something was genetically wrong with them, and that they might seem nice one minute, but then something would happen and they would snap and they would attack you. That they were kind of biological mutants and that they were only acquired as weapons by violent people. And I very much took it to heart.

I had no experience with the dogs otherwise, so I didn't know enough to know that that wasn't true. And so the more I looked into it, the more I realized that the science around why people feared these dogs was really terrible. There really was no science. It was all kind of folklore and myth and media sensationalism. And that kind of gave me a window to talk about a lot of other different subjects using the pit bull as a lens. What is a pit bull? Our guest earlier in the show, Tom McTague, was telling us that an American bully XL is kind of a mashup of some things, but he said even in Britain, they're having trouble pinning down what this dog is. Is it a breed? Is it a subbreed? Is it something different? What is a pit bull, broadly? When we say pit bull, we are talking about a shape of dog. We are not talking about a specific

breed of dog. It's a lot like the word hound can mean a lot of different dogs. Or as I always say, it's like saying sedan. A civic is a sedan, but not all sedans are civics. So within that category of pit bull, which is vaguely a dog that has some kind of lineage connected to bulldogs and terriers, you have four pure breeds, the American pit bull terrier, the American Staffordshire terrier, the Staffordshire bull terrier, and the relatively new or newer American bully. There are many, many, many mixes of these dogs and crosses of these dogs. And so we're really kind of talking about a very vague shape when we say pit bull. Pit bull shaped is probably more accurate. Okay, fair enough.

Are pit bull shaped dogs born inherently violent, born ready to fight, born stronger than other dogs? I mean, well, it depends on what you mean and it depends on which dogs you're talking about. The group has gotten so diverse at this point. There are so many breeders. There are so many mixes. There are so many accidental litters that it's almost as specific as saying, what are Americans like? Or what are Britons like? Or what are people from North Carolina like? Yes, within that large, diverse group, you may have people who have neurological or biological problems or disorders. You may have people who are living in stress and trauma. But the group itself is so large, you really can't make any pronouncements about. If you go back to the breed's history or the original breed's history, yes, absolutely.

There were very well-known fighting lines of these dogs. But there were also many dogs that never saw a dog pet. And so to kind of define the dogs by the people who abused them, I think is unfortunate. I mean, it's very much true that that history was there, but it was also true for a lot of dogs that don't get drawn into this. So the boxer, the Shar-Pei, the Boston Terrier, the English Bull Terrier, those all had histories of fighting. And yet we don't get as worked up about them because we don't have the kind of cultural firestorm around the types of people who own those dogs and what that all means. What is the history of bad or problem dogs? The first dogs to be kind of demonized, at least in the United States, were not pit bulls.

They were small, fluffy, white dogs that were then known as German spitzes. And they were very, very popular. And the same kind of fear mythology grew up around them because of all kinds of ways that society was changing. They were known as ladies' pets, and there were editorials about that women were having pets instead of having children. And that was, you know, society was going to hell because of that. Spitz dogs are the fashion. And if women will have dogs instead of babies, they must expect to suffer the real or imaginary penalties that attach to the unnatural fancy. Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal, 15, 1878. But because they were popular and they were associated with kind of these social changes,

people believed that they bit more and therefore they were kind of poisonous and they transmitted rabies. And we didn't have the science to know that that wasn't true. But the first breed ban in America was in New Jersey and it was against the, quote, German Spitz. And then you had these kind of cycles of demon dogs after that. In the 1920s, you had a huge storm of fear around what was then called the German police dog. Now we call it a German shepherd. They were coming back with veterans who had served overseas. They were then associated with bootleggers who were hiding alcohol stashes during prohibition and that kind of thing. In the 50s and 60s, you had Dobermans. Originally, the Doberman was bred for fierceness,

but our Dobie today is an exceptionally loyal and stable dog with strong protective instincts. There was a St. Bernard fear cycle at once. Cujo was a St. Bernard. Cujo! Oh my God, you're a rabbit. And so it's a very cyclical thing. There's always, as society changes, there's always going to be a dog that's considered the monster dog.

And in the 80s, it just happened to kind of coincide with like the emergence of hip hop and the emergence of street culture and kind of the commercial popularity of street culture that way. And so in the Reagan 80s, when there was a lot of moral panic and a lot of fear. New York officials say the animal is nothing less than a living, breathing, lethal weapon when it's in the wrong hands. It's like putting a gun in the hand of every dissatisfied, bitter, obnoxious, money-seeking maniac. They were just kind of the next demon dog on the conveyor belt.

Well, it's become a very popular dog for a very unsavory element of our humane community. But there was a very different media landscape, and it became much more political about them. It sounds like it became racialized, as so many things do in the U.S., right? Because if we're talking about hip-hop culture, urban youth, right, we are talking about Black Americans. Without a doubt. And so tell me about what we see. You say to some degree it's the same as the demon dog trope, but to some degree it's different. Where are the differences?

What makes this situation with the Pitbull unique in America? It's association with hip hop culture and street culture and people of color has, at least as far as I've been able to tell in my research and has been my experience, and I've been looking into this for a very long time, it's become a proxy for a lot of other social concerns for people. People don't just fear the dog in the way that they have feared other dogs in the past. They want to eradicate them. They want to get them out of their communities. They talk about them in terms that are borrowed from the one-drop rule, that they don't want those dogs out in the gene pool kind of adulterating the good dogs of the neighborhood, that sort of thing. With housing, you have landlords, rather than saying they don't want certain people

in their apartment complexes, they'll say they just don't want people with certain dogs. And that's kind of a way to get around other things. And I believe it was the early 90s in Boston, there was kind of a pilot program where ownership of a pit bull was used as kind of an excuse for a stop and frisk situation with law enforcement. Law enforcement would go to certain neighborhoods and see young men with pit bulls and say, give me your license, or I need to basically get all this kind of information about them that they wouldn't otherwise be entitled to just because they had a, quote, pit bull dog. And so it has ceased to be about dogs or human-animal relationships

anymore, and it has become absolutely a culture war, another kind of casualty of the culture wars. Is it still that way in 2023? Yes, less so, but still yes. I think the good thing that's happened in the past decade or so is that now these dogs really are so popular and people are so used to seeing them everywhere with every type of person from every type of background that they don't have the kind of shock value that it used to have 20 or 30 or even 40 years ago. But in other places, as we're seeing in the UK, that outrage cycle has now repeated itself. Have you ever owned a pit bull?

Yes. Okay. Well, I mean, a mixie, you know, whatever, Durham dog, I always like to say, yes. And she, you know, her genetic testing is Australian Shepherd or something, an American Staffordshire, I mean, who knows, right? And she is a wonderful dog and she is our heart. She is very snuggly and wonderful. And I always like to kind of follow up quickly with, and that doesn't mean that I deny that other people have had really, really bad experiences. And I never want to kind of erase that or like invalidate their fear, which I think is completely understandable. A lot of times you see this as like a war of anecdotes where people will say, I'm terrified of these dogs.

My neighbor had one and I always felt menaced or it went after my dog, etc. And for me to say, well, but mine's really lovely doesn't really matter because it doesn't, you know, it's like saying, well, I got on a plane and there was turbulence and I was terrified and I never want to get on a plane again for someone to say, well, I've been on planes and they're fine. Doesn't really, you know, it doesn't help like fear, fear doesn't work that way. And so I never try to like take people's fear away or invalidate their fears. But I think we can do better in terms of for those people who want more information, who want real science, who want empirical policies and real data. I think there is a lot of space to replace that fear with information.

That was the author Bronwyn Dickey. Today's show was produced by Hadi Mouagdi and edited by Amin El-Sadi. Miles Bryan hopped into Fact Check and David Herman engineered the show. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.