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Dog Law in the UK. Understanding Your Legal Rights!

A lot of criticism and objection to UK dog laws and dog training stem from people not understanding laws. UK dog related laws operates generally outside of emotion and feelings and what you as a non-legal person considers right and wrong is around your feelings. UK law operates on a different level to this.

The legal absurdity of UK Dog Laws – In the eyes of the average dog owner or canine trainer of course!

Firstly, if you’ve put a sign up on your property on your garden gate, fence or front door entrance or even the back of your property and that sign displays words like warning dog or close protection dog on property or beware of the dog or caution and enter at your own risk, then can make you libel in law in a visitor gets bitten.

Understandably putting, a dog warning sign up works for deterrent reasons. I don’t think many people really care about the safety and wellbeing of a burglar or a trespasser who is entering the property for nefarious reasons!

However, if a trespasser or a burglar or a legitimate caller enters your property, comes into your garden for any reason and they get bitten by your dog because you open the door and your untrained dog charges out for example, even if it was a leaflet distributor it’s the same.

The law will treat all the same and prosecute you if the person who was bitten sues you for the assault. You will lose because of your sign displays, because you have knowingly advertised that you have an untrained dangerous dog on your property, which by the very nature of the attack, confirms you are stating a warning, beware or danger dog on this property. Whereas if you didn’t have those signs on your property, you could fight the case and have a good chance of winning and defending yourself because you didn’t know that would or could happen. But by advertising the danger or the warning through the sign, you are acknowledging and confirming as the home owner, that you have a dog that must be warned against and it must be tied up.

The solution is you replace your signs with more neutral ones that still do the same job, such as ‘dog on property’ or ‘German shepherd lives here’ or ‘dog on property’ so these neutral signs aren’t giving a warning of a danger or a beware notice, they’re just announcing there is a dog on the property.

That’s the first law that exists and the next two are even more concerning!

Garden Areas

Let’s look at your rear garden for example. let’s say you have a fenced off garden with an 8-foot-high fence or hedge which is extremely difficult to climb over. And let’s say somebody for any reason, climbed over that fence and came into your property and you had a dog in your back garden relaxing and that dog bit that person, then you are liable for prosecution and you can be sued.

There are no ifs or buts because you didn’t have the dog tied up or under control in your own garden. The law states that if anyone comes into your garden, and I’m not talking about your front garden, but your secure rear garden that is solid and secured with high fences so much that the average person could not even get in. And even if someone were to get in and climb over and got bitten. They could still sue you for thousands of pounds in UK law and no matter what you argue or claim they were coming to do. It makes no difference, a person enters your property into your garden, no matter what the reason, no matter who they are and they get bitten. Then the law states you should have had your dog tied up and under control!

This next law is the most concerning!

If you have a personal need for self-protection and you put yourself out and spend money on a close protection trained dog or a trained close protection attack dog, you’d be looking at least £10,000 entry level fee for an 18 month to two-year-old German Shepherd, Belgian Melanos or Rottweiler.

A powerful dog like these, would be starting in the region of that expense. And that type of dog would usually be trained, to attack and protect using certain keywords in maybe the Dutch or German language to minimise the risk of misuse or abuse by non-authorised people who could handle that dog.

And if someone came into your property, climbed over your 8-foot fence which was secure and locked, even climbed over the barbed wire if you have it and let’s push this to extremes and they already had announced that they’re coming to harm you or they’ve already announced they are coming to burgle you because you are in possession of goods that they want and there’s no question about their motive.

They want to harm or burgle you and it’s 3.00am in the morning, you’re asleep, they open your property by force and come in and your close protection trained dog attacks and bites them. Then they can sue you in court and you will lose. It’s that simple. That’s what the law states in the UK.

Where The Confusion Lies

People get confused because they know the burglar is somewhat malevolent, they’re coming with dark intentions to burgle or harm you, whilst you’re safe in your bed, people who don’t understand the law and bring in all sorts of emotional boundary argument issues, but the law treats that burglar or that attacker with the same legal rights that you should have had your dog restrained and controlled. And yes, they would be prosecuted for burglary or attempted burglary. Or they would be prosecuted or even imprisoned for attempting to attack you or announcing they’re going to attack you, causing harassment and fear and so on.

The law will still pursue them and prosecute them in a separate case, so burglary or threatening to harm you are two separate cases. Entering your property at 3.00am with a forced entry, trespass. The law sides with them that they must be able to do it without them being attacked by a trained dog. The law states your dog must be secured INSIDE your own house to protect the intruder/trespasser from any harm.

They can only sue you if they can prove that you have a trained close protection dog or a trained close protection attack dog. They would have to prove that.

Within The UK

Owning a close protection attack dog, is a dog that has been weaponized or a dog that you have trained to be a weapon. Either you purchased it and someone else trained it, or you trained it. It’s same thing and it comes down to a dangerous, powerful weapon in your possession and yes, the law states that if the burglar is going to burgle you, then they cannot be attacked by a dog that has been trained to attack whilst doing so.

The other side to this law. Is that if you do not have a close protection trained attack dog, but you have the same German Shepherd, Belgian Malinois or Rottweiler type dog and it hasn’t been trained to attack and it’s acted upon its own natural instincts to defend its territory, then you are not generally liable. In other words, they can’t sue you because that dog was not weaponized and it reacted only as a normal pet dog defending its inner space territory.

If your dog is known to be trained to attack inside your territory or from instruction or commands given verbally out of your mouth, then the court case is much harder for you to win if the dog is known to be trained in attack procedures.

In most cases where this has happened in real life, the homeowner has lost. But not in all cases. Some homeowners fight back and it does depend on the strength of how much you fight back in courts, how much you stand your ground and how much legal power the person who entered your property has over you, how far they’re willing to go.

Maybe if they were desperate and they want their compensation for the bite on their leg and they’re relentless to get it and maybe they’ve done this before. It all comes down to the fight in the courts, how far they’re prepared to take you on.

It’s also worth pointing out that there is a law called Homeowners law and that can actually be helpful to you, in scenarios like this.

What is central to this scenario is it’s the actual dog’s specific training in attack and protection work and your specific knowledge of that training which creates the legal risk for you. Same as the beware of the dog signs on your property which also strengthens the argument that you knowingly possess a weapon.

In a nutshell, a trained attack dog equals high legal risk if it bites a person inside your home. But it’s in what context and what scenario that matters whereas a normal dog is low risk if a burglar breaks in, especially if that intruder is clearly trespassing. This is why closed-circuit TV cameras are essential as that could sort the matter out in an instant.

From the homeowner’s viewpoint this law makes your powerful expensive close protection dog ineffective if a person lived by them rules and laws. I don’t see a single person nodding in agreement with this law especially if you’ve got on the wrong side of burglars coming into your home.

Street Attack!

If you were walking up the street and any attacker approached you and they were verbally announcing out loud that they were going to attack you. And they were standing say 10 feet away. And they didn’t move forward. They just said they were going to attack you. But you then released your dog and instructed your dog to attack them. You could be sued because their argument could be, while they weren’t really going to attack you, they were just trying to scare you. And that the proportion of power that you had exercised or used by releasing your dog was totally imbalanced and disproportional.

If that person was threatening to attack you as I’ve just described and they started to move towards you swiftly and efficiently and you had just three or four seconds to make a decision and you released your dog and that dog attacked them, then you wouldn’t be sued or liable for legal action because you used a protection dog correctly and proportionally.

Now if in the same scenario where a person was standing holding a knife and was not moving towards you, but was suggesting they were going to hurt you and you released your dog because they’re holding the knife and you feared for your life and you wanted to neutralise them before it got out of hand, then the chances are heavily in your favour but still not 100 percent.

Because the other side could argue he had mental health issues and it wasn’t going to be used. He was just trying to scare people. So, it depends on the scenario and the context where you can be prosecuted.

This is where the term legal absurdity kicks in. Most people don’t intuitively grasp this or accept it. A clear intrusion by a dangerous person with intense to steal or cause harm. And you’re the one exposed. Many people can’t wrap their heads round this because we instinctively feel the dog should protect us and the law should support us in such scenarios.

Using a trained attack dog in a residential home setting is legally risky and a normal untrained dog acting upon its instinct only is far safer.

A close protection trained attack guard dog that can be proven to have been trained, will always be treated as a weapon and not as a pet and this is why lawyers and insurers get nervous or twitchy. Because the law prioritises proportionality and foreseeability.

Therefore, your dog is considered a proactive weapon, not a reactive pet acting upon its instincts. Even a justified argued bite can legally backfire on the homeowner.

To Recap!

Even if a person was trespassing, entered your property, made physical effort to climb over your well protected fence with barbed wire, you’re not automatically exempt if the dog bites the person in the garden. Even if that dog is not trained to attack, so a dog in your garden that is just a pet is treated differently from a close protection dog inside your house.

Beware of the dog. Signs are tricky and they can strengthen a claim against you because you effectively acknowledge the dog could cause harm and you knew the risk existed.

In some cases, the fact that a person was actually trespassing does factor in and the courts may reduce your liability or in some cases dismiss a claim if it’s clear the intruder knowingly took a risk by entering a private residential property. But this is still not an automatic free pass so you’d have to do your own research on this, especially if you’re looking to obtain a close protection dog.

And whether you actually lose the case depends on the context and how obvious the risk was and how much of an argument you put up and how much closed-circuit TV evidence you can present, regarding the intruder’s behaviour.

One scenario might be slightly different from another one, also how much control you had over your dog. It’s not 100 percent automatic, but the exposure to you being sued and having to face legal consequences which will always be a financial loss are real and substantial.

To release a Close Protection Dog on a person, there must be an imminent threat required, if someone knowingly has come to harm you with a weapon and they enter your safe space and you release a dog in self-defence at that right moment, then that’s generally considered legal. Especially if you can back it up with video footage which will drive down the liability to minimal, or even none.

I personally wouldn’t have a close protection dog which has been knowingly trained without having closed circuit TV in and around my property.

If someone in the street is just making threats only and there’s no physical movement, no flinch, no indication for them to move towards you and it’s a fair distance. And if that person it’s just shouting, threatening and holding a weapon, but doesn’t move towards you and you release your dog out of fear then that can be seen as excessive.

Again, in that case you could be sued or prosecuted because the other side will argue the response might be considered disproportionate.

The law is about proportionality and proof, evidence of imminent threat and danger to you. And the dog’s actions are judged against the level of threats actually presented in the heat of THAT moment.

Context Matters!

If I needed one. I wouldn’t personally hesitate but just having a standard well-trained, home domesticated German shepherd is sufficient for me. My dog wouldn’t hesitate to attack but it hasn’t been officially trained to do so as a trained protection or attack dog but still does the same protection for me on its own instincts.

A bit chaotic and messy but will protect you and your home. These are just my own personal opinions. If you’re thinking of obtaining a close protection trained attack dog, do your research first!

If you do have warning signs on your property and closed-circuit TV, secure doors with alarms. All of these things act as a very good deterrent in the first place and the chances are slim that this will happen. But could! To avoid these OUTLINED legal traps, owners must use elite discipline found in an Advanced Dog Training Program so their animal remains a controlled defender rather than a liability.

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