Attacks push Thailand toward tougher pit bull & Rottweiler bans

Response of pit bull advocates to killings shocks nation

BANGKOK,  Thailand––Momentum may be building in Thailand toward stronger and more sweeping breed-specific legislation in response to an unprecedented surge in fatal and disfiguring attacks by pit bulls and Rottweilers.

Contributing to growing public mistrust of pit bulls,  Rottweilers,  and other “bully” breeds are the efforts of nonprofit organizations including the Watchdog Thailand Foundation,  the Hope Thailand Foundation,  and the Chon Buri Pit Bull Club to invoke traditional Buddhist reverence for life to save some of the dogs who have recently killed people and other animals.

Two bicycling seniors killed in two months

Editorialized Apinya Wipatayotin for the Bangkok Post on September 30,  2024,  “The case of an elderly woman who was killed by a neighbor’s pit bull in Pathum Thani last week is unlikely to be the last tragedy of its kind.  However,  her case is expected to increase calls for state agencies to start taking action to save people’s lives.

“The victim,  67,  was attacked by the pit bull while passing by her neighbor’s house on a bicycle,”  Apinya Wipatayotin wrote.  “She was found in a pool of blood on the street with bite marks all over her body and her right leg almost torn off.

“On July 24,  2024,”  Apinya Wipatayotin recalled,  “a 70-year-old man in Phu Wiang,  Khon Kaen was killed by his neighbor’s three pit bulls as he rode by on a bicycle. He was bitten on the face and head.

18-year-old killed by brother’s three pit bulls

“Last month,”  Apinya Wipatayotin continued,  “an 18-year-old man in Lop Buri,”  named Adisak Chansakulnee,  “was mauled to death,”  in his home,  “by a pack of pit bulls who belonged to his brother,”  a police office.

Lackadaisical police response to the attacks is whetting demands for stronger legislation.  After the fatal attack on the 70-year-old,  officials merely “recommended clear warning signs and secure fencing around the property,”  according to Kittisak Phalaharn of the Pattaya News.

“The victim’s family has reportedly agreed not to press charges in exchange for compensation,”  Kittisak Phalaharn continued,   “and the dogs are evidently going to be given for free to a dog trainer,  as the owner no longer wishes to keep them around.”

Compensating the victim’s family and giving away the pit bulls obviously does nothing to protect possible future victims.

Thai rescue concealed killer dogs’ history

Adisak Chansakulnee was reportedly found about 12 hours after his death, with both ears missing and his skull crushed,  but security camera video showed what had happened.

The Watchdog Thailand Foundation then posted to Facebook seeking “new homes for the three American bully dogs,”  according to the online periodical Khaosod English,  without disclosing that they were the killers.

The two-year-old pit bull who killed 67-year-old Daeng Thammatanta,  said owner Kietkanok Tanlae,  48,   “had been placed in her care by her daughter,”  Khaosod English said.

“The dog had shown no signs of aggression until recently,  when he began attacking others,  all of whom were their relatives living nearby,”  Khaosod English added.

According to Kietkanok Tanlae,  the Hope Thailand Foundation,  the Chon Buri Pit Bull Club,  and an individual dog trainer all had contacted her,  trying to obtain the pit bull.

Even as Apinya Wipatayotin wrote her Bangkok Post column,  police in Don Mod Daeng, Ubon Ratchathani found the remains of a “Mr. Wetchai” who was apparently attacked and killed inside his home by two stray Rottweiler mixes who wandered in an open door.

Pit bull brought to funeral for owner he killed

Only two Thais were reportedly killed by dogs in the preceding three years.

In early February 2023,  47-year-old retired jockey Thedpong,  surname withheld by police,  was killed while defending his 68-year-old mother from a pit bull attack.

That came almost two years after Wisit Sanguan,  56,  of the Pattaya suburb of Bang Lamung,  was killed by his own two-year-old pit bull,  whom the victim had raised from age three months.

“His son witnessed the dog wake suddenly and attack his owner,  taking a half hour to pull the poor man free,”  wrote Neill Fronde for The Thaiger [Tiger].

The Chon Buri Pit Bull Club retrieved the pit bull,  then brought him to Wisit Sanguan’s funeral “to apologize,”  members said.

Anti-rabies vaccination campaign began in 1913

Few nations have formally and systematically addressed dog attacks for longer than Thailand.  The Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute at Chulalongkorn University in central Bangkok was founded in 1913 as a branch of the Pasteur Institute,  headquartered in France,  after a rabid dog bite on the royal palace grounds killed a Thai princess.

The institute introduced a national anti-rabies vaccination campaign.  Wars,  poverty,  lack of literacy,  underdeveloped transportation,  and the difficulty of maintaining the cold chain in the Thai tropical climate combined to inhibit progress,  but from 1977 to 2000 Thailand had only 22 confirmed human rabies deaths in 23 years.

What Thailand did not yet have was either a national dog population control program,  any sort of systematic animal control for that matter,  or widespread recognition of non-rabid fatal dog attacks.

Soi Dog Foundation

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration in June 2000 reported that Bangkok,  then a city of more than five million people,  had exactly 554,463 dogs by census count,  of whom 458,142 were owned while 96,321 were feral.

This survey,  at the political level,  helped to open the way for the Phuket-based Soi Dog Foundation to sterilize and vaccinate more than a million dogs throughout Thailand from 2005 to 2023––and keep on going.

(See Soi Dog celebrates a million animals fixed in 18 years; lesson for U.S.)

Dog population control,  in the interim,  evolved from dog meat exporters randomly rounding up strays for export to Vietnam,  Laos,  Cambodia,  and China,  also with Soi Dog Foundation help,  to strictly enforcing laws mostly already on the books that prohibit either selling or exporting dogs for human consumption.

From Buddhist temples to government dog pounds

Animal sheltering simultaneously evolved away from the ancient custom of abandoning dogs at Buddhist temples to roam free while receiving haphazard care from the monks,  to the present combination of overcrowded,  underfunded western-style government shelters with mostly also overcrowded,  underfunded rescues managed by nonprofit humane societies and private citizens.

Within the span of just 25 years,  Thailand replicated around 150 years of animal control evolution in the western world,  with the difference that U.S. and European animal control never centered on a Buddhist ethic against taking life.

While neither dogs nor cats were never commonly eaten in the U.S. and Europe,  selling dogs and cats for biomedical research,  selling pelts to the fur trade,  and selling carcasses for rendering remained common ancillary industries to animal control in parts of the U.S. and Europe into the late 1990s.

Breed-specific legislation

Thailand was ten to fifteen years behind the U.S. and the United Kingdom,  in particular,  in enacting breed-specific legislation in response to rising numbers of non-rabid fatal and disfiguring dog attacks,  initially most often by imported Rottweilers and more recently by domestically bred pit bulls and Rottweilers.

As in the U.S. and United Kingdom,  however,  Thai legislators were easily persuaded by fighting dog fanciers that not all dogs bred for dangerous characteristics were the problem.

As in the United Kingdom in particular,  where the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 banned only four “foreign” pit bull variants,  Thai legislation has to date been narrowly drawn,  lightly enforced,  and focused entirely on imported dogs,  rather than at the entire category of dogs bred and kept primarily for reactivity,  territoriality,  and the ability to kill both humans and other animals within minutes,  often just seconds.

Banned Rottweilers in 2000

Thailand banned Rottweilers in December 2000.  A man named Nakhon Maha-Ittidol,  41,  was charged with manslaughter after his Rottweiler killed his three-year-old niece,  Ornjira Suksawat.

For about five years the Thai government and mass media seemed to believe the dangerous dog problem was solved.

But on February 9,  2005 two dogs reported by The Nation,  of Bangkok,   to be “a cross between a Rottweiler and a Doberman” mauled three-year-old Pirapong,  also called Nong Nek,  and injured his mother,  La-ongthip,  26,  at Nakhon Si Thammarat,  Khao Phanom district.

The severity of the attack drew national publicity.

Nucharee Raekorn of the Bangkok Post stipulated that the dogs were “Western-bred.”

Added Raekorn,  “The dogs tore open his skull and gashed his ribs. He is in stable
condition after a four-hour operation in which part of his liver had to be removed.  Mrs La-ongthip said the dogs, owned by her brother-in-law Khrood Luekamlang,  attacked her son while she was rubber-tapping.  The dogs were chained loosely to rubber trees,  but managed to bite her
husband,  Supat Luekamlang,  31,  and several neighbors earlier.”

Import ban on pit bulls,  Rottweilers,  Dobermans,  & Fila Brasilieros

The attack on Pirapong Nong Nek and earlier injuries to others,  might have been dismissed as isolated incidents,  except that on April 23,  2005 a five-year-old,  Saharat Eknarongpanich,  also called Nong Cue,  was comparably mauled by “stray dogs,”  reportedly bitten on his arms, legs,  body,  head and neck,  suffering a lacerated windpipe,  in the Don Muang district.

Bangkok governor Apirak Kosayodhin pledged to expedite passage of a dog identification ordinance introduced by his predecessor Samak Sundaravej,  By 2006 every dog in Bangkok was supposed to have been microchipped.

The Thai Department of Livestock Development meanwhile issued an import ban on American pit bull terriers,  Rottweilers,  Dobermans,  and Fila Brasilieros.

But,  because dogs of all of these breeds were already in Thailand,  the import ban mostly just drove up the prices paid for Thai-bred fighting and guard dogs––and because the import ban was overly specific,  it left the door wide-open to importing pit bulls under other names,  such as Staffordshire and XL Bully.

Dangerous dogs proliferated

Again the Thai government and mass media seemed to believe the dangerous dog problem was solved,  even as dangerous dog breeds proliferated,  advertised as cheap security for families and property.

That illusion was indirectly encouraged by police,  as in the U.S.,  where the appellation “police dog” drove proliferation of German shepherds,  Malinois,  and Rottweilers in the mid-20h century.

Pit bull proliferation in the U.S. came from more-or-less the opposite direction,  as the dogs once associated with the Ku Klux Klan became the dogs of choice to guard illegal marijuana plantations,  and then crossed over through prison gangs into the inner city “gangsta” subculture.

Pit bulls had not yet become highly visible in Thailand when a 53-year-old woman was disfigured and killed by her own five Rottweilers in the Pa Sang district of Lamphun province in January 2007.  Local police––having never before seen a fatal dog attack––initially thought she had been killed by three of her Burmese workers who were in Thailand illegally.

Killer Rotts donated to K9 unit

Two Rottweilers,  “raised as pets” according to Prasit Tangprasert of the Bangkok Post,  on August 14,  2008 killed 20-month-old Romklao Plu,  also called Nong Dina,  in the Mahachai-Udomporn community of Payapthit,  Muang district,  as they arrived home from a friend’s birthday party.

The victim’s mother,  Jintana Plu, 42, was injured trying to save her daughter.

The family donated the dogs to the local police canine unit.

Eleven pit bulls & eight Thai dogs to guard a rice mill

The first known pit bull fatality in Thailand came on April 4,  2009 at a rice mill in Nakhon Sawan.  “Three pit bulls mauled a 37-year-old woman to death and injured three other people,  including a 20-month-old toddler,”  the Bangkok Post reported.

“Raksina Tejwattanabamrungkij was found dead near an office of the Rong See Fai Tha Khao Taweeporn Co in Tha Tako district. Her bloodied body was covered with dog bites.

“A Thai dog,  Jack,  lay nearby with serious wounds apparently caused by fighting with the pit bulls as he tried to save the woman.

“Charoensri Lorlertrat,  53,  the victim’s mother-in-law and the rice mill owner, said her family raised the three pit bulls,  two males and one female,  and another eight Thai dogs,  to guard the rice mill.”

Note:  an effective guard dog,  like the Thai dogs,  barks an alarm.  A dog who kills people,  or other dogs,  like the three pit bulls,  tends to cause the very problems the dog is supposed to prevent.

Shadow of rabies lingers

The next two known Thai dog attack fatalities were an unnamed Bangkok public health ministry official who moonlighted as a pet shop owner,  in February 2010,  and 51-year-old Mana Thetrit,  who died in June 2011 at the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute after his golden retriever bit him.

His presence at the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute suggests that he too may have been a rabies victim,  but the institute also has facilities for treating HIV patients,  who may have lowered immune response to other infections transmitted by dog bite.

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