London's new weapon of choice: killer dogs

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The police swooping on Merseyside because a toddler has been killed by a pit bull is all very well, but what the hell are they up to in south London? The local parks and open spaces on my manor are speedily becoming a no-go area for ordinary dog-owners, and those of us who care for those useless dogsubstitutes: children. I've recounted before how, in the cafe at the local park the other afternoon, a young man was "exercising" his dog by tearing a living branch from a tree, getting the brute to clamp it with his jaws, then whirling the snarling bundle of muscle around in the air. My kids were transfixed, as well they might be, because they were witnessing an animal being trained to kill, in broad daylight, in the middle of a city.

A friend who owns a schnauzer said she regularly joins a mournful pack of dog-owners who pathetically parade their amiable pooches along the perimeter of another local park, while its hinterland is given over entirely to the "exercising" of a couple of pit bulls. I sympathise with them. We've been considering getting a couple of puppies for the children - we believe it helps with emotional intelligence for young humans to care for canine young - but the small breeds we're considering would barely make canapes for the local pit bulls, before they start picking on things of their own size.

The 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act is perfectly clear on this question, forbidding absolutely the ownership - or breeding - of any kind of dog explicitly for fighting, and naming pit bull terriers and Japanese Tosas specifically. As it happens, most of the dodgy dogs I see clearly are pit bulls, or if cross-breeds, obviously with a big dash of pit bull or Tosa in them. But even dogs that are harder to identify are still being trained to fight. Why else would a young man, in the middle of the day, be encouraging a powerfully built dog to exercise its jaws, or ceaselessly repeating a "set down" phrase: the order a fighting dog is given to close in for the kill.

If any further evidence were needed of the explosion in fighting dogs in this part of town, there are widely circulating rumours that dog fights are regularly being held in the wasteland by Nine Elms Market.

I'm not necessarily getting at the Met over this - they have their work cut out for them, and impounding a dangerous dog has to be almost as unpleasant as busting one of the drug dealers who habitually own them - but enough is enough. The English have a ghastly residual sentimentality about dogs, which means that there's a communal unwillingness to shop the offenders (as well as a healthy fear of what their owners might do). We need to realise that these aren't our best friends, but some of our worst enemies.

To read the whole of Will Self's column, buy Tuesday's Evening Standard