Examination of Witnesses (Questions 189-199)
MR DUNCAN
DAVIDSON AND
MR ANDREW
CONSTANT
8 SEPTEMBER 2004
Q189 Chairman: Can I welcome our two
witnesses this afternoon: Mr Duncan Davidson, who is a veterinarian
and the Principal of Mitcham Veterinary Clinic, and he is joined
by Mr Andrew Constant, a Trustee of the organisation Animals in
Mind. Gentlemen, may I thank you on behalf of the Committee, for
sending in your written evidence? We heard something of the arguments
to do with the use of electronic equipment and the training of
dogs during the course of our evidence yesterday, but you obviously
bring an expertise both for and against these particular mechanisms
to us this afternoon. I want to start the questioning by asking
you the same question that I have asked all the witnesses: in
the context of this Bill. What is the one thing you would want
us to take away in terms of being in favour of the measure and
what is the one thing you want us not to forget about your reservations
about the way that it is currently drafted? Mr Constant, would
you care to respond to that question first?
Mr Constant: I would say that
as far as shock devices are concerned, I would like to see a specific
ban on their sale and use, certainly their general sale and use.
What would I ask you not to forget? I would ask you not to forget
that there are a lot of vulnerable people and animals out there
that have been and will continue to be affected very badly by
the use of these devices.
Q190 Chairman: Your first comment there
was to focus obviously on the main concerns you have. Are you
generally in favour, though, of the rest of the Bill as it is
currently drafted?
Mr Constant: I was very pleased
particularly with the way it was giving room for future regulation
and particularly the fact that people are being given responsibility
for the animals which they own, which, as it says in the Bill,
they currently are not. So the fact that people can be held accountable
if this Bill goes through is brilliant because that has been a
difficulty in the past.
Q191 Chairman: Mr Davidson?
Mr Davidson: As far as the Bill
in general is concerned, yes, we are particularly happy that there
is an update of the animal welfare legislation. There have been
some flaws in it that were recognised in the veterinary profession
over the years, and have tried to take steps to improve. Certainly
we are quite happy with the way the overall Bill has been drafted,
although there are one or two specific areas that the veterinary
profession want to discuss and no doubt will discuss in the course
of these deliberations. As far as electronic devices are concerned,
that is only a very small part of my interest. I do run a veterinary
behavioural referral practice and we do see some real problem
dogs, and these tend to be dogs which have been to other people
already, other training organisations, behavioural organisations,
and there are some exceptions where, with the best will in the
world, the supposedly kind ways of training, reward training and
so on, simply will not work for certain dogs in certain circumstances.
We always try reward training and positive methods of training
first and in many cases that does work, but you get the odd exception.
The odd exception is the type of dog, for example, which is going
to chase sheep, is perhaps going to endanger itself and other
members of the community by chasing bicycles or by chasing joggers.
It is very often predatory behaviours in fact, which are the difficult
ones. It gets to the stage where other things have been tried
and it is sometimes necessary to try to use some remote way of
controlling a dog's behaviour, when the reward that it receives
is greater than any reward that you can give it—the reward
of chasing a sheep, for example, for a dog that has a strong predatory
behaviour, you cannot give it anything better than that. Sometimes
you have to use electronic training collars and on very, very
odd occasions there is an interrupter, to at least give you half
a chance to try and get the dog's attention and try and give it
something more positive, as far as the owner/trainer is concerned.
It does give you that window of opportunity. That is the main
occasion which, in our practice, we use these collars. We use
them probably in a fraction of 1% of the cases that we see, so
it is a very, very rare situation. But without them we are stuck
and some of these dogs, either they would have to be euthanised
or else they would have to be kept in such a way that there would
be questions of welfare. For example, they might not be allowed
to be taken out at all, or, if they were allowed to be taken out
they might have to be kept entirely on leads and muzzles. It gives
you this window of opportunity along with behavioural training—not
for the owner, necessarily, but for qualified, expert people to
use in order to work on a reward basis of improving their behaviour,
once you have their attention, once you get them away from the
idea of chasing.
Q192 Chairman: That was a slightly longer
answer than the one before, and I would just like to say, Mr Constant,
that there will be plenty of opportunity for you to give a full
explanation of your own point of view because I would not like
you to think that Mr Davidson has had an advantage.
Mr Davidson: Can I say three words
in reservation, which was the other half of your question?
Chairman: You can in a second, but three
of my colleagues have caught my eye and I would like to start
the questioning. So Candy, Joan and David, in that order.
Q193 Ms Atherton: I read both of your
submissions with great interest, as someone who has had a dog
in her life all of my life, of ranging behaviour, including one,
frankly, where I think I was the only person who could properly
control it. At various times veterinarians did suggest to me that
an electronic collar might be a route to follow. In the end I
did not. I read both your submissions and found a lot in both
that I could understand and support. Very much Mr Constant's wish
to see no collars available, and certainly not in shops and able
to be purchased by anybody. And your view, that some animals might
actually be put down because of the inability to be able to control
them—and we are not talking about teaching a dog to sit
and to stay, we are talking about dogs out of control.
Mr Davidson: That is a very important
point.
Q194 Ms Atherton: What would your answer
and reaction be to only licensed through a vet, where other routes
and behaviour had been pursued? Would you support that, Mr. Constant,
and yourself, Mr Davidson?
Mr Constant: Mine would be any
reduction—and I have some examples, which I hope I can hand
out to you later—in the sort of advert that I am looking
at, and the sale and use of shock collars in this country would
be welcomed by us, and I think by most of the people I have spoken
to. Obviously over the last week I have been speaking to a lot
of behaviourists; I have been speaking to a lot of Mr Davidson's
colleagues who are pro shock collars because we want their opinions
too. We cannot argue with what Mr Davidson says; what we would
say is that if you follow the positive route to the end and you
were fully aware that there is no alternative. If you cut out
that alternative you will find a way through, that is the way
we see it. What we feel that Mr Davidson and people who do this—and
he says he is a very, very small percentage and that is great,
that is brilliant—if we cut it out altogether we will find
ways. We are in a transition at the moment. Over the last ten
years positive reward has come a long way. If you went to a dog
school 10 years ago you would have been asked to bring a choke
chain, a stern voice and lots of dominant behaviour. Now you are
asked to bring squeaky toys and lots of praise. The trend is towards
positive reward, and I think what is happening is that we are
hanging on to some of the old ways and that is where we feel we
need to move forward. If there was a choice between nothing at
all and only licensed users, then definitely yes.
Mr Davidson: I think we do have
a certain amount of common ground.
Mr Constant: We would still argue
with you about the use of it.
Mr Davidson: Absolutely, but there
is a great deal of common ground. Certainly in the behavioural
world we are very much in favour of positive methods of training
and getting away from the old fashioned punishment methods, and
that is perfectly fair, but we still have exceptions and these
are exceptions where, if you are going to work with positive reward,
they might never get better; on the other hand, they might get
better but there might be an awful lot of injuries and accidents
that happen before they got better. Positive reward can sometimes
take years and during that time a lot of work goes into it but
accidents still might happen. You can certainly improve the perception
of the dog to the difference between positive and negative by
using an electric collar in these rare circumstances, because
they get the perception that what they want to do that they think
is rewarding is not actually that rewarding, and usually after
literally one or two uses of the electronic collar they understand
that there is not a lot to be gained by chasing sheep.
Mr Constant: The thing that I
would come back on that and say is that the one or two uses could
also include one or two misuses. There are thousands of dogs that
we have heard of and that we hear about. It is not evidence, it
is purely hearsay, but to a certain extent there is such a volume
of it that you have to believe it, that there are so many problems.
There is a court case in Brighton where three dogs attacked and
killed a little dog because the lady was using a shock collar,
and the first time she tried it the dogs thought the little dog
was attacking them and they piled in on the little dog. It is
basically called redirected aggression; you smack the three-year
old and the three-year old smacks his brother. This is what dogs
do, the dog feels pain and it looks round for something or someone
to take it out on.
Mr Davidson: Here we are talking
about misuse of collars, and that is fine, and I agree that there
are situations where collars can be misused. There are equally
situations where other things can be misused; obviously check
chains can be misused, boots can be misused. It is a lot more
subtle misusing a collar.
Chairman: We have the misused message.
We will move on to Joan Ruddock.
Q195 Joan Ruddock: I was going to ask
a question in the same vein that Candy asked. Let us be clear:
at the moment, Mr Davidson is saying that it is under 1% that
you would deem to be the proportion of dogs that can only respond
to this treatment.
Mr Davidson: That is in our practice;
it is probably even less across the whole sphere of dogs.
Q196 Joan Ruddock: Because that would
be a very important distinction, would it not, because it might
be that Mr Constant would say that there is a need to outlaw the
use by untrained, ordinary owners; would I be correct in thinking
that is really the position?
Mr Constant: Yes, we would definitely
like to see that. We would like to go further, but, yes, that
would be a plateau for us.
Q197 Joan Ruddock: So we would be looking
to see if it could be restricted to use by licensed people. If
that were the case is it likely that the manufacturers would still
stay in business? Is this a huge business at the moment and would
it be reduced to a tiny business if this were to be changed, as
you suggest?
Mr Constant: It is huge.
Mr Davidson: That is where there
might be some difficulties anyway because the manufacturers of
the good collars are generally multi-nationals.
Mr Constant: It is an international
market.
Q198 Chairman: Mr Constant was asked
the question and I would like him to respond and then you can
put your two-penneth in.
Mr Constant: It is an international
market. The shock collar manufacturers are primarily in the USA
and two, as far as I am aware in Germany, but, as far as I am
aware, the German manufacturers do not have markets in the UK.
If there were to be a ban over here it would not be the first
because Austria has banned them and three states in Australia
have banned them. There are others and I have not had time to
find out who they are, but I believe that they are basically countries
around Austria that have banned them. This is another reason why
we want to see a ban now. I do not think sales in Britain are
strong enough for the manufacturers to say that it is going to
harm their businesses because they sell something like 600,000
to 800,000 of them in the USA, or they did do in 2002. It was
500,000 in 2003, and I think what they are looking to do is open
up new markets around the world and we are one of them. I do not
think that we are going to harm any industry by saying no to shock
collars at the moment. My personal view is that we will not in
a couple of years' time because their use is waning.
Q199 Joan Ruddock: If I may just interrupt
you, Mr Davidson is actually saying that there are some dogs for
which the alternative, he suggests, is either they are put down
or they have to have a shock collar.
Mr Constant: I would quite happily
say to Mr Davidson, you show me the dog that you feel needs a
shock collar and I will come and I will do the work and I will
prove to you that a shock collar is not needed and then you throw
away your shock collar. How is that? I would do that with any
dog because I have an enormous backup from people like Robin Walker,
who is a well-known vet behaviourist, Dr Ian Dunbar, who is a
well-known vet behaviourist, Dr Roger Mugford, who is a well-known
vet behaviourist. All I would have to say is, I have been challenged
to sort out a dog and I would have half a dozen of the top behaviourists
in the world coming with me to help solve this problem and we
could do it. I have done it; I live with nine dogs that were going
to be destroyed. We have had them from various re-homing centres
and we live perfectly happily with them, with no problems; they
are not a danger to the public, they are not a danger to us, they
are not a danger to each other. We have absolutely no problems
and I can guarantee you that at least four of them, if they were
to have gone into Mr Davidson's for a referral, he would have
probably suggested, "I am sorry, there is nothing you can
do with this dog, you need a shock collar."
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