THE death of David Kearney, the 11-year-old Darwen boy, savaged by rottweilers on the eve of Christmas, was a desperately tragic event and the wholesale chest beating which followed was totally predictable.

He was buried yesterday (Wednesday) and it is incredibly difficult at such times of high emotion to be objective and logical. Certainly the families of those involved will find positive thought impossible. A youngster has died in the most horrendous circumstances and the guilty have to be punished.

Well, in this case, that has already been done. The two rottweilers responsible for mauling David were destroyed on the orders of Kevin Turner, their owner.

Mr Turner will carry the burden of this tragedy to his grave. One has to question the logic of keeping four of this breed as domestic pets, though that is Mr Turner's business, and he wasn't to know a young lad would take the appalling risk of climbing into his back garden.

With crime on the increase, more and more people are buying dogs for protection. And the breeds they are buying are german shepherds, rottweilers, dobermans, rhodesian ridgebacks, bull mastiffs. In other words, ones which bite first and ask questions afterwards. I have no argument with that. In fact I have two bull terriers of my own and in the past have owned dobermans.

However, what is not generally acknowledged, but certainly ought to be, is that dogs with the ability to seriously injure, even kill, must be properly trained and kept under strict control.

It is totally irresponsible, and unfair to the dog, to buy a killing machine on four legs and expect it to develop an ability to differentiate between a burglar and an innocent victim, such as an 11-year-old child.

That is not to infer any criticism of Mr Turner. For all I know he may very well have had no reason to doubt the temperament of his dogs and is on record as having said they had not been trained to attack.

They don't need to be. A dog's natural instinct is to guard its territory. They would have seen poor David as an intruder. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and paid dearly for his mistake.

There have been the usual howls of self-rightous indignation following his death. But when all the humbug has died down, one salient point will remain. Dogs, especially big, aggressive breeds, need proper training; caring but strong supervision.

At the risk of being repetitive, let me again make this very important point. A rottweiler or any similar breed won't hesitate to attack, or at least show frightening aggression, if challenged on its own territory. That remark also applies to a toy poodle. The difference here is no-one, to the best of my knowledge, has died after being bitten by a toy poodle. Sadly, we cannot say the same about rottweilers.

But don't blame the dogs, especially the ones involved in the death of David Kearney. They didn't know why the lad was in that back garden. It was, the vast majority of people will conclude, a tragic accident and one from which, hopefully, lessons will be learned.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.