An elderly couple have been left heartbroken after their pet Chihuahua was killed by a pack of dogs.

Brian and Vera Rowe's long-haired Chihuahua called Emma was attacked by a pack of Dalmatians while she was being walked in Royd's Park, Cleckheaton.

"We are absolutely heartbroken. Emma was like a child to us," said Mrs Rowe, 80, fighting back tears.

"We are utterly lost without her."

Mr Rowe, 72, said: "We were walking Emma on her lead as always and had met with a friend of ours who has a Springer Spaniel.

"We saw the four Dalmatians and walked in the opposite direction but then two of the dogs came after the Spaniel and attacked it. "They bit its neck and one of its ears. It was terrifying."

The couple said the owner of the Spaniel managed to fight the dogs off with his stick.

"Then two of the dogs came for Emma," said Mrs Rowe, of Queen's Street, Gomersal.

"The dogs bit her then threw her up in the air. It was over in a matter of seconds."

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said inquiries were ongoing to trace the owner and the dogs involved in the attack.

Mrs Rowe said she and her husband were backing the Telegraph & Argus Curb the Danger Dogs Campaign.

The T&A's campaign is calling on Home Secretary John Reid to make the following changes to the Dangerous Dogs Act.

  • Compulsory registration for all dogs to be introduced, rather than the current system which only limits it to certain breeds.
  • All dogs to be micro-chipped to allow ownership to be traced
  • Mandatory life bans from dog ownership to be introduced for anyone convicted of having a dangerous dog
  • A record of control orders to be kept on every dog's registration
  • A specific offence of allowing a dog to stray to be added to the Act.

e-mail: jennifer.sugden@bradford.newsquest.co.uk

  • See Friday's T&A for more on this story
HOW YOU CAN SIGN OUR PETITION

You can back our Curb the Danger Dogs Campaign by signing our petition, which will be submitted to the Home Secretary, John Reid.

We want to collect as many signatures as possible in the next month to show Mr Reid the strength of feeling in the district about the inade-quacies of the Dangerous Dogs Act and to put pressure on him to better protect the pub-lic against dog attacks by act-ing on the changes to the law we have outlined on the peti-tion.

You can support our cam-paign simply by adding your own name on the petition on-line at our publication's website www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk. Or you can print out the petition and ask family, friends and colleagues to sign as well. The more signatures we receive, the stronger our message.

But whatever you can do will add weight to our cam-paign and help to make it clear to Mr Reid the strength of pub-lic feeling regarding the des-perate need to change the cur-rent law.

Remember, you need to re-turn copies of the petition to the T&A (the address is at the foot of the form)

We will then submit all the forms we receive to the Home Office.

  • Click here to sign the petition on-line

  • Or click here to download a copy of the petition to print out
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