How the authorities might decide your dog is an XL Bully: Key characteristics that could put your pet at risk of the ban

Following the announcement that the American XL Bully dog will be banned by the end of the year, dog owners are wondering how their pets could be affected. 

Dog expert Stan Rawlinson has proposed a Spain-type plan, taking after the Perros Potencialmente Peligrosos (PPP) scheme.

It requires any dog owner that owns a dog with particular characteristics, such as a muscular build, heavy weight over 20kgs, with a wide skull and jaw, muscular neck or convex cheeks to have a paid licence for the dog.

The PPP scheme also requires owners of these dogs to have insurance, proof of vaccinations and attending training classes, for the dog to be microchipped, for the owner to have a clean criminal record, and they can be required to show proof of the licence on the spot or face a fine.

‘The difficulty is we've got to understand what makes an American Bully – they're a crossbreed and a mongrel, the crossbreeds with one other dog, with the base an American Pitbull, which is banned in this country, so [identifying] it shouldn't be difficult [on that basis],' he said.

‘What we can't work out is the mongrels – with a couple of crosses in there. You end up with a changed dog that's still got the drive and the instinct of the American Pitbull, quite often used for the same type of work, dog fighting, shoot hunts, all the rest of it.

‘It leads to a moral dilemma – if you add in any type of mastiff [when breeding], like a Cane Corso, the dog is a mongrel and that's a problem for the legislators.

‘I don't believe we should ban specific breeds. We should ban types, attributes: wide mouths, athletic bodies, used for dog fighting.

‘If they're part of that description, you put them on a list of potentially banned dogs.

‘The problem with a breed ban is if you ban, say a short-hair American Bully, people will breed long-haired one. If you made it much more general, if you did that, that's a start.

‘That way, you're not just banning it, you're controlling it. It all sounds harsh but it's the only way you can deal with it.

‘We've had another person killed (this week), seven this year, 10 last year and heading for the same, and we hadn't jumped on it as quickly as we did we would've seen a lot more.

‘It's not just the dog's build – it's what they've been bred and what they've been taught to do, and Americans have been messing about with the DNA of them [American Pitbulls], affecting it, making it more muscular, more reactive, more aggressive. We need to ban all imports from America, too.'