Sick dog owners ‘are ordering their pets to attack and kill cats’

In the Manchester evening news today

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/sick-dog-owners-are-ordering-5317408

This is horrible. Poor cats.

Got to ask though - "believed to be Staffordshire Bull Terriers". I wonder who "believes" the breed of the dogs and why. Easy option?

"forcing their vicious animals to kill three cats and attack several others.

The attacks have all been carried out over the last two weeks with up to eight cats missing feared dead."

No disrespect to the cats and their owners, but that is a lot of cats in a short space of time. In my 30 years of owning dogs, I have only experienced two cats who have stuck around to get even a chance of being mauled by my dogs. The other 300+ cats have sped like lightning away - into undergrowth/backyards/up trees. Exciting to the dog yes, but catchable? No.

How awful, poor kitties, but yes I have to agree Lynda, believed to be SBT how do they know? Media on the band wagon!

It always seems to be "believed to be" or "Staffordshire bull terrier type"

Jay wrote:It always seems to be "believed to be" or "Staffordshire bull terrier type"

I agree

And that is usually the last you here of it.

Yeah blame our breed, then forget about it, it's just so flippant

That's horrible, but even worse how they are so quick to assume!

Maria90 wrote:That's horrible, but even worse how they are so quick to assume!

Absolutely maddening. As if no other breed of dog would possibly chase a cat  

As for "encouraging" a dog of whatever breed to kill a cat - how does this evil "Staffy" owner get the cat to stick around to be killed? He must be a Svengali. Ever tried to catch a cat that doesn't want to be caught - impossible.

Cheap, sensational headlines at the expense of our breed.  

The cats round here would be the ones to start fights if they stick around in the first place.

Ok this woman may have seen one incident but I would have thought foxes will be a more likely attacker in general

Horrible, why would someone do that? Some people are sick  

Claire - cats hate dogs and vice versa, fact of nature, ages old. Battering a dog's owner for chasing a cat wouldn't solve anything.

You've got dogs - have they ever chased a cat? Have they ever caught one?

You've got cats - have they ever been chased by a dog? Have they ever been caught by one?

I'd bet
- answer to first question Yes
- answer to second question No

Lynda
I admit I was a little bit reactive in my response to the post. However I was upset at the fact people were deliberately setting their dogs on cats for their own amusement. I am well aware that there can be a certain animosity between dogs and cats and dogs will chase cats and I accept this, I just don't accept people doing this on purpose.

It`s a******s like this that give Staffie owners a bad name.
Scumbags like this should be banned from every owning any animal.
The media love bad stories about Staffies and Pitbulls. They jump on
the bandwagaon all the time.

One thing I will say is," If two Staffies attacked a cat it would be dead in less than a minute. The cat in the picture looks fine to me.
Maybe he was training them to kill and this was their first attack.

Chiara wrote:Lynda
I admit I was a little bit reactive in my response to the post. However I was upset at the fact people were deliberately setting their dogs on cats for their own amusement. I am well aware that there can be a certain animosity between dogs and cats and dogs will chase cats and I accept this, I just don't accept people doing this on purpose.

That's OK Claire - I get reactive too!  

If I ever saw someone deliberately get their dog to chase a cat I'd be angry too. But the cat would escape 99.99% of the time, I just can't believe this original story - something wrong there.

I edited my post Lynda, when I looked at it again it was a bit ambiguous in what I meant to say. Knee jerk reaction I think, I can't believe how cruel people are. I also get fed up of Staffs being villified in the press (I know everyone on the forum feels like this).  

Yeah I realised you had edited your post Claire - no problem.

And yes, we are all sick and tired of Staffies being blamed for all the evils under the sun. To blame 8 missing cats in 2 weeks on "believed to be" Staffies is stretching credulity.