Attacking the Attack Dogs

“I thought that she was going to tear the dog’s throat out with her bare teeth – at first she was screaming abuse and pummelling it with her fists, then, as they rolled around on the ground, she went for the throat!” says twenty eight year old painter Jim Kank, describing the bizarre sight he recently witnessed from a window in a building he was working in: the Home Secretary Suella Braverman engaged in a fight to the death with a large dog. “It was all going down in this courtyard the building overlooked – she came striding up to this dog shouting stuff like ‘Think you are hard, do you?’ before attacking the animal. The dog was huge, but looked utterly terrified by her!” The fight was broken up by the arrival of RSPCA inspectors, who had apparently been called by a concerned witness, with the battered and bleeding dog being taken to a vet for emergency treatment. It reportedly later died of its injuries. For its part, the government has denied that the Home Secretary had attacked a dog, instead claiming that she had been defending a small child from an attack by one of the notorious ‘XL Bully’ dogs that she is proposing to ban. “But for her quick thinking and bravery it could have been a defenceless child having their throat ripped out,” a Home Office spokesperson told the press. “People should be praising Suella Braverman, not trying to condemn her for animal cruelty!”

Kank, however, disputes this version of events, claiming that there were no children present and that Braverman’s attack on the dog was unprovoked. “There’s no way she was responding to a random dog attack – for one thing, the dog was brought in to that courtyard on a leash and every time the terrified animal tried to escape, blokes with sharpened sticks pushed it back into the fight,” he muses. “Not only that, but the courtyard was lined with spectators, all posh looking types, behind mesh barriers, who were cheering as she and the dog got into it! Money was clearly changing hands as the fight went one way, then the other!” Kank’s observations would seem to back up allegations that the Tory party have been staging dog-fights in order to raise funds. “Rumours of these fights – in which the most rabidly right-wing Tory MPs are pitted against supposedly dangerous dogs in fights to the death – have been rife for months now,” says Kevin Lewter, an investigative journalist for online news source Speculative Times, which is planning to run a story on the scandal. “This eye-witness account backs up a lot of what we’ve heard about these barbaric fund raisers.” According to Lewter the government’s recent campaign against dangerous dogs – spearheaded by Suella Braverman – is simply a ploy to ensure that they have sufficient quantities of canines for their dog fights. “It’s true that they want to take these animals off of the street,” he claims. “They want them off the streets and into their makeshift arenas to be mauled for money by the likes of Therese Coffey and Lee Anderson.”

In the light of these revelations, there have been claims from pro-canine groups that the so-called ‘dangerous dogs’ railed against by the government aren’t, in fact, dangerous at all and are being unfairly victimised. “Listen, the only reason that dogs like the ‘XL Bully’ breed that Suella Braverman wants to ban are being accused of attacking people is that people keep challenging them to fist fights. Completely out of the blue,” says Tim Brickhouse, president of the Big Bastard dogs Defence League. “They see one of these dogs, minding its own business as it is being taken for a walk, and just go up to them and start goading them into a fight. It’s because the dogs look so muscle bound and aggressive – they just look as if they are spoiling for a fight. So, for some people, the natural reaction is to push back and shout ‘If you think you are hard enough, come and have a go’. These poor canines were simply defending themselves – but the reactionary press report it as them doing the attacking!”

Brickhouse has little sympathy for those allegedly injured in so called dog attacks. “OK, so a few of these dog-provoking bastards got severely mauled and OK, so maybe a few of them were kids, But what did they expect?” he asks. “ As for the kids, well, I blame the parents – they really should teach their children better than to be cruel to animals. Damn it, they’re the ones who should be facing fines – or being put down. It’s bloody outrageous the way in which these dogs are being victimised when they are the real victims!” Animal activist Brendan Hykes believes that it isn’t so called dangerous dogs that need to be cracked down on by the authorities. “It seems clear to me that it is rabid Tory politicians like Braverman who need to have action taken against them,” he opines. “We need a ‘Dangerous Crypto Fascists’ Bill introduced into the Commons, designed to address the risk to the public that they pose – if they aren’t publicly mauling single mothers, the disabled, judges, climate protesters and just about anyone who disagrees with them, they are busy robbing the public purse.”

Hykes is quick to make clear that he doesn’t favour applying some of the solutions for dangerous dog breeds proposed by the government to Tory MPs, no matter how right wing they might be. “While extreme measures are needed, I’m obviously not proposing that the likes of Braverman, Lee Anderson or their ilk should be humanely destroyed,” he reassures. “I’m not a cruel man, after all. I just think that they should be muzzled and kept on leashes in public, thereby preventing them from biting anyone and giving us some respite from hearing the bile they spout. If they still get uppity in public, then members of the public should be able to hit them with a rolled up newspaper.” He adds the provioso that The Guardian, probably shouldn’t be used for this purpose, as it could upset the extremist MPs even more, leaving them foaming at the mouth. “Mind you, that would give the police an excuse to Taser them, though,” he ponders. “I know this all sounds a bit extreme but, believe me, it is the only way that he can even hope to start making our streets safe again.”