Life at the centre of Britain’s ‘terrifying’ battle with illegal breeders and killer dogs
| Published date | 19 February 2023 |
| Publication title | WalesOnline (Wales) |
She can’t change what’s happened to Jack but she is doing this interview to highlight that the callous practice of breeding dangerous dogs for bags of money is causing families immense heartache across Britain. Statistics of deaths by dog attacks and dogs seized by police across Wales and England since Jack died are damning. It is a trade fuelled by a lucrative organised crime business of extreme dog breeding where unscrupulous breeders mix powerful dogs for a bizarrely popular “muscle-look”. Campaigners like Emma, who says she does not believe there is such a thing as a “bad breed”, are calling for a change in the law to prevent dogs from being “failed from the start”.
Read next: The story of the little boy left alone with a muscular, dangerous dog that killed him in the most horrific way imaginable and why it should never have happened
Jack died following an attack by an XL bully at a house in Penyrheol in Caerphilly borough which he’d innocently walked into without knowing the danger the dog inside posed. The dog, named Beast, had been captured on CCTV in the days before Jack’s death jumping up and trying to bite people in the street in Penyrheol. Beast’s owner Brandon Hayden, who can be seen punching the dog to the head as a means of punishment in the footage, was sentenced to four years and six months in prison while Amy Salter, who was taking care of the dog at her home where Jack was killed, was jailed for three years. She is expected to be released on licence in a few months.
This is the chilling clip:
CCTV shows dog that killed schoolboy lunging at another child
“I hate that they’ll be out so quickly, I absolutely hate it,” Emma said. “It’s not fair at all. But I’ll keep fighting [for prevention of deaths and longer sentences for those in control of dangerous dogs]. Right now we have little to compare Jack’s case to because there are not many convictions for deaths following dangerous dog attacks. It seems each case that I look into comes to a dead end. Going forward I am going to fight for stronger sentences for those who are convicted. If I can deter one illegal breeder or bad owner or stop one family from going through what we’ve gone through then I’ll keep going.”
Across Gwent, which covers Caerphilly, since Jack died in November 2021 a total of 92 dog attacks were reported to Gwent Police in the year to November 2022. The figure was 63 for the year to November 2019. A total of 22 dogs were seized by the force following reports in the year to November 2022. For the equivalent period to November 2019 that number was six. The trend is indicative of a national picture. Each force area that WalesOnline looked into for this piece showed a significant increase in dog attacks and dogs seized across the same period. From January to July 2020 there were 7,790 dog attacks across the UK. For the same period in 2022 that figure was 9,834 – a 26% increase. Earlier this month Gwent Police officers told councillors in Penyrheol they’d seized 13 dogs within the Caerphilly South area alone so far this year.
While she knew the problem was worsening across the UK Emma said she struggled to comprehend the news that an 83-year-old woman had died a few streets away from where Jack had been killed in an almost identical way in December – becoming the 10th person to die in the UK from a dangerous dog attack in 2022 and again by an XL bully type mixed with a Cane Corso. Shirley Patrick, who lived with dementia which her daughter Gail Jones said had “actually been a blessing in the end because she had no idea what had happened”, died in hospital several days after the attack which left her in a coma.
“I thought it could happen again but for it to happen so close to home after Jack’s story literally went all over the world I was just like: how” Emma recalled. “I don’t think it’s about the breed of dog as such. It comes down to breeders and sometimes owners not taking responsibility. Do the breeders selling them even care The dogs might look cute to some but what is going on behind the scenes...
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