Concern is growing over the security of possession of the American Bully XL dog, with frequent reports of biting and mauling by the breed.
It was a frightening sight in a viral video from Birmingham filmed over the weekend. In the video, an American Bully attacks an 11-year-old girl, bites and struggles with a man who tries to defend her, then relentlessly chases and attacks another man as he runs away, repeatedly pulling him to the ground .
Alongside the shocking statistics – according to a reportAmerican Bully dogs have been involved in 44 percent of attacks on people in 2023 and 75 percent of deaths since 2021, despite only making up around 1 percent of the UK’s dog population – the video prompted the Minister of the Interior to take advice on the possibility of banning the breed altogether.
Where are these American Bully XL Dogswhich most people only recently heard about for the first time, are they coming?
Perhaps the simplest explanation is that American Bully XLs are not a new breed: in fact, they are a subtype of the much better-known American Pitbull, originally bred to fight other dogs in blood sports now illegal.
Pit bulls are banned in the UK under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. So, if American Bullies are a subtype of pit bulls, why aren’t they already banned by the same legislation?
The breeder is believed to be the first importer of the American Bully into the UK from the US. claims to have fought several court cases in the early 2010s which led to the differentiation of pit bulls and American Bullies in the eyes of the law. If this is correct, it appears that without this legal action, American Bullies would still be considered pit bulls and therefore would not be allowed in the UK.
Legal to own and breed
As it stands, however, their possession is perfectly legal. According to some reports, ownership has increased significantly in recent years, which may explain the increase in attacks.
Their breeding is also legal and, in many cases, breeding seems to have been aimed at making the dogs ever stockier, ever more muscular, ever more powerful and intimidating. Activist group Bully Watch UK argues that Most American Bully dogs in the UK can be traced back to “either fighting or presumed human-aggressive lineages” – that is, the known ancestors of today’s Bullies were themselves Bullies. very dangerous animals.
Although this is legal in principle, in practice much breeding is not above reproach: Bully Watch UK claims that many Bully breeders found on pet sales sites are not properly trained. approved. It is also apparent from photographs of the dogs that many of them have had their ears cropped, a practice that was once used to eliminate a weakness in pit fighting (with smaller ears, there are fewer places for the dogs to attacking dogs can bite and tear), but this is now done for aesthetic reasons. Ear cutting is illegal in the UK under the Animal Welfare Act.
Subversive attraction
Why this sudden explosion of popularity? It’s hard to say for sure. As we’ve seen above, the American Bully hasn’t been available in the UK for long, so there’s a certain novelty attached to it. Since it is so closely related to the illegal pit bull, there may also be a subversive attraction to owning one, knowing that you are skirting the law.
Bully breeders do images that look like Hollywood movie posters, or those announcing showdowns in boxing matches, to display and arouse enthusiasm in particularly desirable (i.e. muscular) studs and their crossbreeds. Dogs in posters regularly have names like “Venom”, “Homicide”, “Mayhem” and “Savage”. There is a macho culture attached to dogs that seems analogous to gun culture in the United States, where owning and breeding dogs is both a hobby and a status symbol.
But there is also a strange paradox. Alongside advertisements where dogs are surrounded by flames and presented in the most threatening manner possible, this is also regularly highlighted, for example on the United Kennel Club website, an organization that records bullies with other dogs, that dogs are family-friendly. “Despite their powerful appearance, their (sic) demeanor is gentle and friendly,” writes the United Kennel Club. “This breed makes an excellent family dog.”
Arguments for a ban
Along with other campaigners, Bully Watch UK created the Campaign for Evidence-Based Regulation of Dangerous Dogs, which campaigns for American Bully dogs will be added to the list of banned breedsor that they be reclassified as pit bull types and therefore made illegal in the UK by default.
Arguments made against such “breed-specific legislation” are often weak or misleading. For example, A Guardian article this week argued that “banning certain dog breeds in the UK will not stop attacks on humans”. This is a straw man argument: Campaigners are not claiming that all dog attacks would stop, but that a particularly damaging and hurtful form of attack would be reduced if bullying were made illegal.
Likewise, the claim that banning certain breeds “implies that others are safe, when the reality is that any dog can bite severely” seems to insult the intelligence of the general public: people are fully capable of realizing this, while any dog can bite, attacks from an extremely large, powerful and tenacious breed are more likely to cause serious injury or even death.
The same goes for arguments that dog attacks are due to poor training or “irresponsible ownership”. It is certainly true that a poorly trained or stressed dog will be more likely to be aggressive, but even with exactly the same treatment from its owners, an aggressive Bully-type dog is a far scarier prospect than a Poodle. aggressive toy.
Assault allegations
This is also perfectly true, as an academic quoted in The Guardian, that there will be an overlap in the levels of aggression displayed by different breeds. In other words, some spaniels will, for example, be more aggressive than certain Bully dogs. But any familiarity with statistics tells you that there are overlaps of this type between members of almost every group. Some women are taller than some men, for example, but we would find it ridiculous if anyone claimed that this casts doubt on the very large, average, overall height difference between women and men.
In response to the argument that American Bully dogs are particularly aggressive, advocates often point out scientific studies which show only small differences between breeds in terms of aggressive behavior.
But since such studies usually come from self-selected samples of people, self-reporting information about their dogs using questionnaires, and since none of them include American Bullies anyway, it It is not clear whether they are relevant to the debate.
The statistics we saw above are much more relevant: they are real numbers, and they show a Huge overrepresentation of American Bully dogs in attacks and deaths in the UK. Bully Watch UK estimates that American bullies are 270 times more deadly than the rest of the dog population.
This is a figure we can no longer ignore.