What An Example For a Parent To Set A Child

@ninalanyon Interesting point. I am not a solicitor so I don't know how it would be regarded legally, but from what I knowledge I have gleaned of the law:

Criminal damage (to the owner's property)? The dog owner had probably not intended to kill anything; whereas "criminal damage" might suggest a wilful act in law. However, she can hardly claim to have not known or thought the dog should be kept on a lead, and she seems to have made no attempt to control the canine, to obtain veterinary care for the bird (via the staff), offer to recompense the owner or even show any remorse or apology.

"Working animals"? I don't think there is any such distinction in British law, but....

... Causing unnecessary suffering to an animal? I think that is the proper name of the charge, from reading reports of cases under it. By this charge it does not matter if the animal is a pet, a "working" one, farm livestock or wild. She might argue she had put the injured bird out of its misery - but from the evidence we have, her negligence allowed her dog to injure it, and she had made no attempt to determine if it could have been treated.

Civil action? That would still need sufficient proof of the woman's identity and link to the act, and that's where the difficulties start.


I don't know if anyone managed to obtain the car number. The newspaper report does not state that happening, but it's possible nobody was close enough to see it, or witnesses were too shocked and angered to think about noting it.

If a dog owner allows the pet to attack farm animals, the farmer is allowed to shoot it. Dog attacks on livestock are a serious and very distressing problem, and in one case a cow was killed by a dog or dogs driving it over a cliff. Such shooting is of course neither possible, nor desirable, in the case of dogs attacking pet animals in a garden open to the public, even if the owner or any staff member is a licensed gun user and has a suitable weapon to hand.

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Though a totally separate matter, a vet writing in the same paper that reported the above, expressed her horror at someone publishing on-line a video of trying to give a cat a bath. The images were apparently made for "entertainment" or "fun", showing the brute wearing heavy gauntlets as protection from the terrified animal's inevitable struggling and fighting by teeth and claws.

@ArishMell I have a vague memory of my wife telling me that there was such a distinction, she was a lawyer though not a specialist in that field. Apparently it hinged on the idea that the loss of a working animal has an economic impact on the owner and that the loss of a pet does not.

But it was many years ago so in addition to the possibility that my memory is faulty it is also quite possible that the law has been radically changed in the intervening decades.

@ninalanyon I think that matter of economic value would be taken into consideration by a court of law, but the premise of the offence is the wrongful injuring or killing of any animal. Certainly in all the reported cases I have seen, the monetary value was separate from, but additionally to, the basic charge of cruelty.

That charge can extend to farmers mistreating their livestock although that is thankfully rare - it seems more likely among small-holders unable to cope with small, failing businesses, and the cruelty is more often by neglect than will. Though still serious, of course.

Somewhat similarly with pets kept in appalling conditions, or simply abandoned outdoors somewhere as a sort of living "fly-tipping".

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There is also a lot of unintentional cruelty about by people who would be horrified if they understood that they are doing. The most common examples of such ignorance are feeding bread to swans; and jogging or running lengthy distances with a dog on a lead clipped to the runner.

(Swans are largely vegetarian, eating aquatic plants; and bread is bad for them. Running continuously for long distances is not natural mammalian behaviour - that our own species can make ourselves do that for fun and exercise is not an excuse to enforce it on other animals; and by extension I am uneasy about horse-racing too.)

@ArishMell As I was walking home from the office one afternoon some years ago I passed a young woman jogging. I was very amused to see a tiny short haired chihuahua running in front of her with the lead taut (it was a very light lead clipped to her belt). The dog was clearly capable of outrunning her at that moment. Of course she probably had to pick it up soon afterwards.