Samantha Frost sleeps with her pit bull terrier Rex. She is eight years old and the five-month-old pup has already bitten her once. The little girl raises the heel of her hand to show the small scar that marks the day when the dog was a "bit giggly" and attacked her. She had shouted at him to get down off the sofa and he had responded with his incisors. Luckily, he let go - pit bulls usually lock on to their victims and try to rip, a trait that has led them to be labelled "devil dogs".
Samantha and Rex have become inseparable since he moved into her terraced home in Salford. This week, Samantha's mother, Claire, 24, became all too aware of how Rex could be a time-bomb waiting to go off, after five-year-old Ellie Lawrenson was savaged to death on New Year's Day by her uncle's "pit bull-type" dog. Ellie had been staying with her grandmother, Jackie Simpson, when she was attacked at 4.30am. The dog, Reuben, which also hospitalised Simpson, was shot by police officers.
The RSPCA says Claire should seriously consider having Rex put down. Martin Marsh, the charity's chief inspector for the Merseyside region, said: "We could not, in all conscience, rehouse a known biter. Anybody who has a dog that's bitten a child should not leave the child alone with the dog. I would say it's bordering on criminal letting that child sleep with the dog. You may as well leave that child with a loaded shotgun. It's a no-win situation. The only way forward there is that the mother should be seriously considering whether the poor sod should be euthanased."
When Claire paid £300 for the white puppy with a patch on his eye she had no idea that he was an illegal breed, that traditionally his forebears had been reared for fighting and had been known to attack not just other animals, but adults and children.
"When I got him, I didn't have a clue about dogs," she explains. "My daughter said "get me a brother or a sister or a dog", so I opted for the dog. After I got him people told me he was a pit bull terrier. I got him from my friend, his dog had had a load of puppies and I took one, not knowing what they were. I want to get rid of him but I don't like breaking my daughter's heart. I didn't have a clue whether he was legal or not, then people told me he was illegal but it was too late."
Rex's breed was made illegal under the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act, along with Japanese tosas, fila brasileiro and dogo argentino. The only way Samantha would be allowed to keep him is if her mother obtained a certificate of exemption from a court after having Rex neutered, insuring him, having a transponder implanted beneath his skin and marking him with an identification tattoo. Rex should also be leashed and muzzled in public places and led by a person over the age of 16. Like many owners of pit bulls, or pit bull crosses - which are also illegal - Claire was wholly unaware of the law.
"He has had his injections, the vet didn't say anything about it being a full pit bull or that it wasn't legal. It's not worrying me that it's illegal. I don't really know much about the law," she says. "Every time I mention getting rid of him, she's heartbroken. But I keep thinking, 'what if it takes her face off?'. I am scared now and I will never leave him alone with her. I have never left her alone with him since he bit her hand. I have told her if he bites her again he will be put down. You just don't think your dog's going to do it. The more he is growing up the more you realise he is capable of it."
Samantha has been told that a little girl, just like her, was killed by a dog just like Rex. She seems confused because her bite was "just a little bit sore" and she says that she sleeps alone with the dog. She says: "I am not scared of him - I love him. Well, I am not scared of him any more. When I first got him I was a little bit scared but now I am just used to him being around. I am a little bit scared that he might bite me again."
The Office of National Statistics records the number of deaths caused by dangerous dogs as an average of 2.3 a year from 1999 to 2005. More than 3,000 people are recorded injured by dogs each year but many more incidents, like Samantha's bite, go unreported. In 2005, three people were convicted of breeding a fighting dog or from a fighting dog while just over 400 were found guilty of allowing a dog "to be dangerously out of control in a public place injuring a person". This can be any dog, not just the four that are illegal.
There is no breakdown for pit bull attacks but they have historically been bred to be fearsome, vicious attack dogs that are willing to fight to the death. Some are tortured or inbred to make them more vicious. There is a burgeoning, hidden market in pit bulls despite the dogs being virtually outlawed. In reality, Rex simply shouldn't exist.
Martin Marsh says: "With the 1991 act, if you follow it to the letter, those dogs that people have should have been neutered and we should be getting to a stage where every pit bull should have naturally died of old age. There's obviously breeding going on in the country, some of it organised through dog fighters and people who never got them registered and neutered in the first place. The natural gene pool has been watered down and there are a lot of crosses. You do have your pure breeds that are being produced totally illegally."
Since the attack on Ellie Lawrenson, there has been an influx to Merseyside's RSPCA kennel of pit-bull type strays as people abandon them in fear. In recent years, Marsh explains, there has been a marked increase in the number of these dogs on the streets. "You see a large number of fellas with these big, powerful breeds. They are tough guys, big hard men and they have got big hard dogs. They like the kudos that goes with it."
There are, he says, responsible owners and irresponsible ones. The latter "are people who keep them as status symbols, irresponsible owners who don't think about other people". It is not pit bulls, as a breed, that is the problem, but the owners.
Some breed or keep the dogs for fighting. Marsh explains: "We know dog fighting goes on in Merseyside. You have got your amateurish sparring on street corners and the guys who will meet up for a 10-minute roll with the dogs in the park. It goes on and then they move on. There is proper professional dog fighting that is extremely well-organised and well-hidden. It is hard to get close to and get to the bottom of."
Joe Dowd is no longer involved in the pit bull fighting game in the Manchester area. "My last fighting dog was 10 years old when he suddenly started snapping at people, so he had to go. They're a lovely animal, but you can't always trust them - and you certainly can't trust the ordinary public with them, you have to understand them," he says.
Joe got his first pit bull in the early 1990s when there were around 20 fights a month on either side of the Pennines. Staged mostly on farms, dogs would be matched by weight - "just the same as boxing really", he says. There would be a referee and a qualified vet in attendance. The two contestants, held on a leash initially, would face up to each other in the sandpit which formed the ring. When the leads were slipped, the animals would fight until one of them turned "tail-a sign" indicating that he had had enough.
Before the 1991 act, the animals were imported from America, where only prolific winners would be used as sires. "Technically," says Joe. "Pit bulls are just a bigger version of a staffordshire bull terrier, but whereas staffs have been domesticated for a long time, pit bulls are still being bred from dogs that are still fighting."
Joe left the game when the gangsters moved in. "They were making money from drugs and protection and started going to the fights to enhance their macho image," he explains. "They would intimidate the referee into allowing dogs to fight to the death. They would also match dogs of different weights, knowing that the bigger dogs would have a massive advantage. Fights would then take place in any available venue, cellars, council house bedrooms, you name it."
Joe says he has nothing but contempt for the current crop of "irresponsible" owners, saying that they have no idea of how to train a dog.
"I've seen the dogs in their big collars, with weights attached. They think it strengthens the dog's neck muscles. It doesn't - the best way to do that is to hang a tyre, let the dog jump up and 'rag it' and a good strong dog will hang there, by its teeth, for maybe quarter of an hour or more."
Treadmills in the back garden are the sign of a lazy owner. Younger owners, he says, don't take fighting seriously. "Maybe they have the odd little set-to in the park, but mainly they keep them to boost their macho image. They are saying, 'look at me, I'm in control of this tough dog, that must make me tough'."
Mitchell Bryan, 18, is one of the new type of owners, who got his pit bull crossbred Lynch not for fighting but because his idols have them. "If you look at these rap stars in these videos, they have got them and you want to listen to them and you want one too," he explains, before springing to the defence of his dog. "If this was an angry pit bull, I would have to hold it on a lead and it would try to bite people but it doesn't. I wouldn't leave it in a room with my little sister. They might just jump on her or bite her. With a pit bull you can train them to do anything."
Mitchell's 15-month-old dog is a beautiful specimen, the brindle and white colours on his back clean and shiny: he pulls and tugs on his leash but does not bare his teeth. Mitchell got him from a friend for £100 but did not know he was illegal. He says: "I think this is legal because the police don't ever say anything about him. And he's had his needles done, so he must have been to a vet. Maybe he's semi-legal."
The increasing fondness for pit bulls among people like Mitchell and the attack on Ellie has led Merseyside chief constable Bernard Hogan-Howe to call for a national amnesty. He has this week introduced an amnesty in his own force area. Last year, he said, there were 68 incidents involving dangerous dogs on Merseyside. His officers seized eight pit bull dogs, believed to be used for dog fighting on Wednesday nights. His proposal was immediately criticised by the Kennel Club. Branding it a "knee-jerk response", a spokeswoman said: "We do not welcome the pit bull amnesty or any other breed-specific knee-jerk response reminiscent of the rushed, and ineffective, Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. While we understand the intentions of the amnesty to reduce the number of dog attacks, the Kennel Club is of the view that displays of aggressive behaviour by any dog, regardless of breed, is the responsibility of the dog's owner."
Claire and Samantha may take heart that just because Rex is a pit bull terrier it does not mean that he will kill - the Kennel Club mantra is "Blame the deed, not the breed". But they need to know how to train the puppy and neither of them have had a dog before, never mind a pit bull. As Rex bounds in from the back yard, clothed in a special doggy jumper, Claire shakes her head: "I'll have to find him a new home. He could just snap." The tears well up in Samantha's eyes. "On the pit bull website," says the child. "You can see a little baby sleeping with a big massive pit bull. I want to sleep with Rex."
A nation and its dogs
6.8m UK dog population as estimated by Pet Food Manufacturers Association. Of these, 1.6m are mongrels
2.3 People killed by dogs each year. Before Ellie Lawrenson, the most recent fatality was Cadey-Lee Deacon, five months, in September 2006
3,000 The number of people injured by dogs each year
23,000 The number of neglected dogs looked after by the RSPCA in 2005. Lifestyle changes mean there are fewer owners
37.5p The price of a dog licence. But when they were abolished in 1987 fewer than half of owners held one
£22,000 The average cost of owning a dog over its lifetime. Great Danes cost £3,216 a year, a Jack Russell £212
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