Control of Dogs in UK Law

(3) The court should ordinarily consider, before ordering immediate destruction, whether to exercise the power under section 4a(4) of the 1991 Act to order that, unless the owner of the dog keeps it under proper control, the dog shall be destroyed (“a suspended order of destruction”).

(4) A suspended order of destruction under that provision may specify the measures to be taken by the owner for keeping the dog under control whether by muzzling, keeping it on a lead, or excluding it from a specified place or otherwise: see section 4(a)(5) of the 1991 Act.

(5) A court should not order destruction if satisfied that the imposition of such a condition would mean the dog would not constitute a danger to public safety.

(6) In deciding what order to make, the court must consider all the relevant circumstances which include the dog's history of aggressive behaviour and the owner's history of controlling the dog concerned in order to determine what order should be made.

[12] In our opinion the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, properly construed, sets an objective test, namely whether there were, in the circumstances of the case, grounds for reasonable apprehension that the dog would injure any person. The apprehension is not, in our view, restricted to the owner’s apprehension; rather it is a question whether the court is entitled, in the whole circumstances, to conclude that there were grounds for reasonable apprehension that the dog would injure someone.

A person keeping an animal "mansutae naturae" which he knows has a propensity to do a particular kind of mischief is under an absolute duty to prevent it form doing that kind of mischief and is therefore liable without proof of negligence for any damage caused by the animal's acting in accordance with that know propensity.

As we have observed, Flack was concerned with section 3(1) of the 1991 Act. Nevertheless, we consider that the same principles are applicable to a case which falls within section 1(3) of the 1991 Act.