A man who was savagely attacked by his neighbour's dog and faced two operations to repair his mauled arm is calling for more to be done to protect the public from vicious dogs.

Stephen Ogden, of Bierley Lane, Bradford, was attacked by his neighbour's Japanese Akita dog in his garden last January.

"I went into my garden at about 8pm for a cigarette and my neighbour's dog got loose," said Mr Ogden, 51. "It came into our garden and started bashing into my dog, a Labrador.

"As I put my hand down to try to stop it my neighbour's dog grabbed hold of my arm and started pulling me around the garden."

As the dog pulled Mr Ogden around his garden his wife desperately tried to pull the animal away and his two teenage children, who witnessed the attack, called an ambulance.

The attack broke Mr Ogden's arm in two places so badly that he needed 87 stitches and two operations at Bradford Royal Infirmary.

"The consultant surgeon at BRI told me it was the worst case of savaging he had ever seen," said Mr Ogden.

The attack meant he was forced to take three months off work because he could not drive - an essential part of his job as a sales director.

After the attack, Mr Ogden was told by the police that the dog would be put down. But this did not happen and the person deemed in charge of the dog, Sohan Singh, was ordered to pay £5,600 in compensation, which was later reduced, and given a conditional discharge for 24 months, by Bradford Magistrates' Court in March last year.

"The dog is still living next door which is a real pain," said Mr Ogden. "If it had attacked one of my children they might well have died."

Since the attack almost a year ago the family no longer use their back garden for fear that the dog might attack again.

"I used to love going out into the garden and now I just don't go out there," he said. "If we do, we check to make sure that the dog is not there. I don't like my children going into the garden."

Mr Ogden believes that the police and the courts need to be tougher on owners whose dogs attack innocent victims. "I was very disappointed with the actions taken by the police and the CPS, particularly as I wasn't kept informed by the police about when the court case was," he said. "I wasn't given the chance to explain what had happened in court."

Akitas are not listed as dangerous dogs under the Dangerous Dogs Act but they are classed as a fighting breed.

Mr Ogden is backing the Telegraph & Argus campaign for Home Secretary John Reid to make the following changes to the law:

  • the establishment of a compulsory registration scheme for all dogs to enable potentially dangerous dogs to be monitored.
  • the compulsory micro-chipping of all dogs.
  • a lifetime ban on owning a dog for anyone convicted of owning a dangerous dog.
  • the setting up of an accurate register of owners and their dogs.
  • the introduction of a fixed penalty notice for those who allow their dogs to stray.
e-mail: sunita.bhatti@bradford.newsquest.co.uk
HOW YOU CAN SIGN OUR PETITION

You can back our Curb the Danger Dogs Campaign by signing our petition, which will be sub-mitted 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 inadequacies of the Dangerous Dogs Act and to put pres-sure on him to better protect the public against dog attacks by acting on the changes to the law we have outlined on the petition.

You can support our campaign simply by adding your own name on the petition online 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 campaign and help to make it clear to Mr Reid the strength of public feeling regarding the desperate need to change the current law.

Remember, you need to return copies of the petition to the T&A (the address is at the foot of the form) by Thursday, October 12.

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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