WOW. There will be some special treats in Kim the dog's bowl this week after she defended her family from a roaming pitbull.
The incident in Whangarei's Anzac Rd has again highlighted the perils of that dangerous dog breed, although the animal which attached Kim and threatened the safety of John
Williams and his family is unlikely to have been a pure bred. It was probably a cross-bred animal with enough hint of pitbull in it to display the terrifying, relentless fighting instincts that Mr Williams witnessed.
Kim wasn't the only hero.
As Mr Williams repeatedly stabbed the dog, five-year-old Bella-Rose Waipouri-Globbits grabbed her 8-month old sister Alaska-Dawn from the kitchen floor, and whisked her to safety in a bedroom.
The pitbull had roamed onto their property and attacked Kim.
The tenacious dog was stabbed eight times, bashed over the head several times and eventually had to be stood upon to keep it still, and anyone else near it safe.
The Williams family is lucky that Kim - as painful as it was for their pet - was subjected to the brunt of the attack, and not Alaska-Dawn. Such was the commotion, neighbours thought Mr Williams and his wife, Stacey Waipouri, were having a domestic. Another neighbour thought the animals were being subjected to abuse from Mr Williams.
If the pitbull had been housed properly in a fenced section, this would not have happened. Which may tend to lean observers toward the "there are no bad dogs, only bad owners" viewpoint. Ask yourself this though: Do we need dog breeds that work themselves into aggressive, almost unstoppable frenzies at the mere hint of blood. I am sure that pure-bred pitbulls trained properly, and looked after well, make good pets.
But the random strain of pitbull that flows through so many cross breeds would suggest that we don't need them roaming our streets, and that there is argument to ban them, let the strain weaken, and these animals disappear.
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