Face to face with my worst enemy

"In believing the media scare-stories about dangerous dogs and stereotyping all dogs as potential killers, I had done to dogs what the rabid rightwing press does to Muslims."

Read Sarfraz Manzoor's Guardian article.

Cast your vote on pets or threats, leave your comments below and come to our free short film screening of Life's a Bitch at Rich Mix on 19 August.

Battersea says 'enough is enough'

Did you see the papers on Monday? The Metro covered the BBC's Panorama programme on the rise in 'aggressive' Staffordshire Bull Terriers in London.

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home had to put down about one third of the dogs it took in last year - a total of 2,815 animals, of which 1,931 were healthy. Read the Metro article.

See Panorama coverage on the BBC website.

But do these dogs deserve their fate? Use the comments to give us your views.

Forget the urban foxes, we should be culling those Staffordshire Bull Terriers.

Never in my life have I suddenly seen so many mean looking dogs stalking our streets and patrolling our parks. Dangerous dogs like Staffordshire Bull Terriers. They're a menace. I love to see nice dogs in the park, wagging their tails and running in the sun - I let my grandchildren pat them and say 'hello doggy'. But nothing is guaranteed to scare any of us more than one of these devil dogs off the lead. They're the canine version of the Bogey Man!

Did you hear about that boy in North London, Albert Strang? Knocked off his feet by two puppies! He was apparently left in quite a shock and the worst thing is that the owners weren’t apologetic about it. And everyone remembers poor Ellie Lawrenson up in Liverpool some years back, who was locked by the throat in the jaws of her uncle’s Pit Bull Terrier’s and shaken to death. Pit Bull Terrier’s have been banned in the 1991 Dangerous Dogs act so why don’t we cull and ban the rest of those flesh eating monsters?

I kept a cutting from the Times a few years back, which had some shocking stastics; In London last year almost 1,000 dogs were reported as being dangerously out of control in public. The RSPCA received 750 complaints about dog-fighting and dog attacks in English streets, compared with 192 incidents in 2002. Meanwhile, 3,800 people were treated in hospital for dog bites, an increase of 43 per cent over the previous four years.

Apparently it’s a gang thing. Skinheads, nasty criminals and "hoodies" like to have these horrendous creatures to gain respect from their gang contemporaries. They breed dogs that way to become more and more destructive.

And that is why I vote for the extinction of these threatening, dangerous, and quite honestly hideous dogs!