Dogs: Electric Collars

Lord Scott of Foscote Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Scott of Foscote (CB)]

My Lords, I regret that I can see no case for any further action being taken with regard to these collars. I declare an interest. I have two dogs; one is a small border terrier, who does not enter into this discussion at all—it has never had a collar put on him and does not need one. The other is something of a cuckoo in the nest. It is the result of a piece of enterprise on the part of one of my granddaughters, who saw an advert in the newspaper which sought a home for a dog. She asked her father—my son; he and she live in Leicester—who said, “No; we’ve got no room”. She then rang us and asked if we would have this dog, and we replied, “No. We’ve got the room, but we don’t want this dog”.

Being a self-willed girl, she then got on the bus, got the dog and brought it home to Leicester. It came down to visit us in north Buckinghamshire; we have lots of room and a largish garden, and it was quite a nice dog, although nothing special. It went back to Leicester with the family, and began to get bigger and bigger—it was a bitch—and eventually, out popped five little puppies. Goodness knows what the father was. The bitch herself was a big mongrel, and the puppies were of a parentage undiscoverable. However, puppies are always lovely, so all the puppies came down to spend weekends with us, and eventually my enterprising granddaughter sold four of them, for £80 each. She is 18 years old and is obviously on her way to becoming an entrepreneur of some sort. They kept the final puppy, which grew and grew, and got bigger and bigger. They could not possibly have it in Leicester as they live in a house in the middle of the town and the puppy needed space. We have the space, so it came down to us as a puppy and stayed with us, and has stayed with us ever since.

It is a very big dog indeed. It has a head and jaws like a Rottweiler, the coat and the demeanour of a Rhodesian Ridgeback, massive feet which suggest that it has mastiff ancestry, and it is a lovely dog with people. It is a beautiful dog, admired whenever anyone takes it for walks by people, who say, “What a lovely dog”. However, the problem is that it is very aggressive towards other dogs. We have consulted dog psychiatrists, who say, “The trouble with your dog is that he regards all dogs, particularly ones that yap at him, as potential prey”. So he deals with them as he would deal with any prey—rabbits are fair game and every now and again he has caught one, though not very often—and when he gets in the way of these little—what is this?

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

You have one minute left.

[Lord Scott of Foscote]

I have had a note that says “One minute left”. I am afraid that I am going to ignore it. This debate is scheduled for an hour.

[Baroness Northover]

You are speaking in the gap, which is time-limited to four minutes.

[Lord Scott of Foscote]

I am going to continue with my speech unless I am instructed by the Chair to sit down.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Andrews) (Lab)]

I am afraid I have to instruct you, my Lord. It is a rule of the House that speeches in the gap are limited to four minutes.

[Lord Scott of Foscote]

Have I had four minutes yet?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

You will have done in about a minute.

[Lord Scott of Foscote]

Well, the upshot is that this dog is controllable by an electric collar. We have an electric wire going around the house and he wears an electric collar that means he gets a bit of a shock if he goes out into the garden, so he does not. That works.

When we take him out for a walk we take that off and put another collar on him. We have a little zapping instrument, and if he shows signs of aggression towards other dogs, which he has done—he has damaged dogs severely, and I have paid vets’ bills for the owners of these dogs that now run into four figures—we start using this collar, which works. He is learning, and is becoming a manageable and controllable dog because of the collar. He is intelligent enough to know that when he gets zapped, he gets zapped. He is beginning to leave other dogs alone now. He is only two years old and a lovely dog, and the notion that I would have to have him put down because of some idiot proposition that any use of collars is bad I find repulsive. I quite agree that any excessive use or misuse is serious, and that would be a criminal offence, but when they are properly used they can render a dog controllable and avoid it being put down.