Joe Gawne from Blackpool says his two-year-old XL Bully dog 'Wispa' is ‘the most caring, loving and playful baby’ he has ever met.
The Lancashire stepdad who allows young children to play with his 11 stone XL Bully says he will end his own life if his dog is taken away, after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to ban the breed.
The Lancashire stepdad who allows young children to play with his 11 stone XL Bully says he will end his own life if his dog is taken away, after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to ban the breed.
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00:00 Good girl.
00:02 Good girl.
00:08 She was the first, first XL bully that we had.
00:11 And why pick that breed?
00:13 It was just, we did a lot of research to be fair.
00:16 We come to the park a lot with Dominic, so we get to see what dogs are behaving in certain ways
00:21 and reports that you see online and everything.
00:24 And everything we saw about the XL bully was the nanny dog,
00:29 the gentle with children, the, you know, they love playing,
00:33 they just want to snuggle all day on the couch and it's exactly what she is like.
00:38 She's not bothered about attention.
00:40 She doesn't, you know, her perfect day is laying on the couch all day with us all watching films, isn't it?
00:46 Just not bothering anyone.
00:55 They're not nice to see, obviously, no child being bit by a dog is a nice thing to see,
01:01 but, I mean, you can't take that one or them two or them three dogs and say all breeds like that must be the same.
01:10 Because you'll have dogs out there that are seven, eight, nine years old,
01:13 have been family dogs all their life and have never had an attack,
01:17 never even thought about attacking, and you're putting them families in a state of worry as well.
01:23 It's just not fair at all.
01:25 What categorises an XL bully? Rishi doesn't even know.
01:28 No.
01:29 So why are they banning XLs?
01:30 There's five variations of a bully.
01:32 There's an exotic, a pocket, a classic, a standard and an XL bully.
01:36 And the only difference between the five are the height of the shoulders off the floor, the withers.
01:42 And if it's a bully breed and it's over 19 inch tall, it's then classed as an XL bully.
01:48 But all of the attacks that we've seen, they haven't all been of dogs over 19 inch tall.
01:53 I saw one of one with a, it must have been a pocket or a classic.
01:56 It was the same size as a Staffie.
01:58 But because that owner has gone, I've got an XL bully, it's then gone in the newspaper as XL bully attack.
02:03 That dog's not an XL bully.
02:05 It's just another example of a small breed that's been trained badly and has now attacked a child.
02:13 Here you go.
02:14 Oh, drop the ball and everything for a good old sniff.
02:21 Oh, he's licking it.
02:23 One million percent. It's either the breeder and the environment that the mother and the puppies were brought up in for the eight weeks of the life with the breeder,
02:31 or it's the life that they've then had with the new owner once the change of ownership happened.
02:37 And you could take any breed of dog, being sausage dog, pug, jack russell, whatever you choose to do,
02:43 and you could breed that dog to be vicious.
02:46 You could keep it locked in a cage, not feed it properly, not clean up after it.
02:50 You could probe it, beat it, slap it around, not give it a very good life.
02:55 That dog is then going to be cautious of humans.
02:59 And when it has a litter of puppies, for the eight weeks it spends raising them puppies,
03:04 it's going to teach the dogs to be cautious of humans.
03:07 When them dogs are then going to lovely family homes, not knowing that that's the case,
03:10 that dog's a danger to those children because it's been raised to be cautious and wary of humans.
03:15 And when the dog's of an age to not just run away and defend itself, that's what it will do, unfortunately.
03:21 But that's all down to either the breeder or the owner.
03:25 We were quite lucky, weren't we, because the breeder that we got her from was a legit breeder.
03:31 And she came to us, she was already toilet trained, she never bit Dominic once.
03:38 All of her sister and brothers were the same.
03:41 And we still have contact with him now.
03:43 So we still have general contact if there's any issues, and if we need any advice,
03:47 we'll message him because we know he's a good XL owner.
03:51 I don't think there is a right answer to it,
03:54 because you can't really do anything to monitor people that have already got XLs,
04:00 whereas if there's a report of a dog that's vicious, barking, or it's attacked a dog, it's attacked a child, it's snapped,
04:06 that person should be put on a register that he cannot then own another dog.
04:10 Because what's to stop him having his XL bully destroyed and put down because it's been violent
04:15 than just going and getting a German Shepherd and doing the same? He's still got a violent dog.
04:19 So it's him that needs putting down, not the dog.
04:22 It's him that should be banned from having a dog, and if he isn't, he should have a prison sentence.
04:28 What are you doing?
04:30 Oh, what's the matter?
04:33 I love it.
04:36 He doesn't pose like that for my camera.
04:38 The first thing Dominic does is go downstairs and say, "Morning, Whisper."
04:41 The last thing he does before... He's the last person, well, being in the house, that he gives a kiss to goodnight.
04:48 And I'd hope we've brought Dominic up well enough for him to realise how to treat pets.
04:54 I love her, and also she's nice to me, and also she likes me as well, and every night I give her a kiss and cuddle.
05:10 She does cuddles as well, doesn't she?
05:12 Yeah.
05:13 It's going to be detrimental to Whisper's life.
05:21 Like you saw her in all the videos, she's running around, going to chase the ball.
05:25 What's she going to do when she's on a lead?
05:27 She can't go and run and chase the ball.
05:29 And then there's the stigma around muzzles.
05:31 People are going to cross the road even more so when they see her with a muzzle.
05:34 Yeah, it's like, "Oh, she's got a muzzle, she must be dangerous."
05:36 And then she's not going to have any children approaching her,
05:39 and she's then going to have that disattachment from people showing her love.
05:43 If she doesn't like wearing a muzzle, she's not going to like being on that walk.
05:47 She's going to want to get home as soon as she can to take the muzzle off.
05:50 Even muzzled in the car.
05:52 So when we go to camping trips and we've got a three-hour drive,
05:55 she's got to be muzzled the whole way.
05:57 It's not fair, and it's going to affect her health.
06:00 And the last stipulation of it was that your dog is housed in an environment
06:04 that it's impossible to escape from.
06:07 A house with a locked front and back door does not constitute an impossible enclosure.
06:13 What the police class as an enclosure that your dog cannot escape from is galvanized steel,
06:19 like what's in the zoo.
06:20 We live in rented accommodation. We've got a rented house.
06:23 We're now having to wait for the landlady to tell us yes or no
06:26 on whether we can have this galvanized steel that's going to cost us £2,500.
06:31 And if she doesn't, we're then going to have to think about moving out
06:34 and finding a different house with a landlord that will allow a dangerous dog
06:38 and will allow us to change the garden into a galvanized--
06:41 And it shouldn't be happening. It shouldn't.
06:47 Six, six, four, wait.
06:50 Ha ha ha.
06:51 Six, other four.
06:52 Good girl.
06:53 Ready?
06:54 And look at them over there as well. They've walked straight past,
06:59 and they're like going over towards other dogs, but they don't come over here.
07:03 They sort of redirect a different way.
07:06 She is a lovely dog, and people can kind of tell it from afar, even though she's big.
07:13 It's the first thing they normally say when they come over.
07:15 "Oh, look at her. Isn't she a big, gentle giant?"
07:18 And they're fine with it. They allow the kids to stroke her.
07:22 They let them play fetch with her, play with a ball with her.
07:26 She's never once barked, growled.
07:29 I mean, strangers can take the ball out of her mouth.
07:32 And she doesn't mind it at all. No, she just wants to play.
07:38 Hello.
07:40 Nicely.
07:41 Hello.
07:42 She's a proper fox.
07:45 She's a proper fox.
07:46 She's a proper bowery at the moment.
07:48 Nothing whatsoever is wrong with the breed.
07:50 It's just all due to the owner, how they're raised, and how they're brought up.
07:54 [BLANK_AUDIO]