It’s a cliche of journalism that “Man bites dog” makes a good headline and “Dog bites man” doesn’t. Despite this, serious dog attacks are now so frequent that “dog bites man”, “dog bites woman”, and “dog bites child” headlines are proliferating.
In 2024 there were over 30,000 attacks in England and Wales, with many victims needing hospital treatment. The 2024 restrictions on keeping XL bully dogs haven’t vastly reduced this number.
Pit bulls and several other breeds were already banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act. While some breeds certainly are more dangerous than others because of their strength and temperament, a well-trained, well-kept dog of almost any type is safe.
Some people keep dogs as weapons, encouraging them to attack strangers or fight other dogs. Some selectively breed them for aggression. But most don’t.
It’s often well-meaning owners who have little control over their much-loved dogs, or who neglect them, who are the problem. Even a chihuahua can be dangerous if it sinks its teeth into a child’s face, arm, or leg. It’s the owner’s responsibility to minimise the chance of that happening, not the dog’s. This is an example of what moral philosophers call “role responsibilities”.
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The role responsibilities of a doctor include keeping up to date with research, respecting patients’ privacy, prescribing the best treatment available; the role responsibilities of a schoolteacher include delivering lessons at an appropriate level and creating a safe environment for pupils. The role responsibilities of a dog owner include not just providing food, water, exercise, and appropriate veterinary care, but also training the dog to a threshold level that makes it safe for it to be out in public with other dogs and people.
Duties of care and training are for the dog’s sake and for other people’s, too. If an owner isn’t prepared to take on those minimal responsibilities, morally at least, they shouldn’t be an owner at all.
Legally, however, dog owners can fall short of the moral threshold and still escape prosecution. And even where there are laws against cruelty, they aren’t widely enforced. Who hasn’t seen someone lash out at their pet, or yank hard at a choke collar, with impunity?
One part solution to the dog attack problem would be to institute the equivalent of a driving licence on grounds of public safety. Any potential owner would have to demonstrate knowledge of basic dog care and have a good understanding of training. They’d also have to commit to providing for their pet in sickness as well as in health.
Some owners would object to this on the grounds that it would infringe their civil liberties. Demonstrable risk of harming others is, however, a legitimate ground for curbing individual freedom. Dissenters might respond that adult humans are presumed competent to look after children in the absence of evidence to the contrary, without passing any test. Why should dog owners be different?
There is a more radical solution: end dog ownership altogether. Who argues for that? Well, at least one philosopher, Gary Francione, has done so.
Dogs are a special kind of domesticated animal that can only thrive alongside humans, and they have a long history of doing so, but Francione argues ultimately that there’s no moral justification for continuing that tradition. His is a Kantian stance extended to non-human animals.
Francione cares for six rescue dogs himself, but still believes that in an ideal world they would not have existed. Owning an animal, he maintains, violates that animal’s moral rights. Keeping a dog is using it for human ends. Animals have intrinsic worth and treating them as property is tantamount to enslaving them.
His point is that no matter how well you treat a human enslaved person, there’s still something fundamentally wrong with the relationship because it violates human dignity to be owned. The same holds for the owner/pet relationship.
I think Francione is wrong. Dogs aren’t humans. I prefer Martha Nussbaum’s approach, which involves granting animals rights to flourish according to species-specific needs and capabilities.
Dogs can’t live well without us. A responsible owner can provide a dog with a life of companionship, care, respect, dignity, and love. Some owners have better relationships with their dogs than with family, friends and colleagues.
The prevalence of attacks, however, demonstrates that many people aren’t caring adequately for their pets. We shouldn’t tolerate this. These incidents are a symptom of an underlying moral failing: far too many dog owners are shirking their basic role responsibilities.
