The National Council of SPCA’s has come out in support of the Sizwe Kupelo Foundation, which started a petition to ban pit bulls as domestic animals in South Africa following a spate of attacks on people and dogs by the powerful breed.
By Tuesday morning the petition had received more than 32 000 signatures, with the foundation saying on Monday that it has been receiving calls from pit bull owners who wanted to get rid of their dogs.
“The calls were mainly coming from KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, with the foundation referring them to their nearest SPCA for collection,” it said in a statement.
The call has been necessitated by the recent attack in which a 10-year-old was killed by his family’s two pit bulls in Nelson Mandela Bay.
“These attacks continued unabated, and we cannot continue losing young people like Storm Nuku and innocent civilians to these vicious dogs that have repeatedly shown that they should not be kept as pets,” Sizwe Kupelo Foundation said.
Countries such as Finland, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Portugal and others have banned and put restrictions on the ownership of the breed or its importation. Sizwe Kapulo, the foundation’s founder has called on the South African government to follow suit.
However, the spokesperson for the pit bull Federation of South Africa (PBFSA), Lehanda Rheeder, said while pit bulls are known to have an inherent temperament, the aggression of any dog towards people is not a breed problem but a human one.
“Dogs have been bred historically for certain functions, and while the pit bull is one of many dog breeds that have been bred to have an aggressive temperament, it was intended to be towards other animals, not humans,” said Rheeder.
She added that the problem comes when the aggression is targeted towards humans- through training to be a guard dog or for dog fighting, which is still a problem in South Africa.
“Dogs such as the American pit bull terrier- among others- are more likely to than not to be loving and loyal pets if it’s bred and kept in a sound and stable environment,” Rheeder said.
Source: Eyewitness News, IOL, Business Tech, image from Twitter: @SAfmRadio