I WOULD like to comment on the dangerous dogs cover story (CN, May 25).

My dog was bitten by a bulldog while we were having a walk in the park. My dog was running and playing on the field. A bulldog and its owner ran on to the track and my small dog barked at the bulldog, which then bit my dog’s neck. I cried when I saw my dog being bitten and disabled and I thought it was going to die.

The owner did nothing until my dog looked like it was dead and he came to try to separate the dogs.

I took the dog to the vet and it took a while for my dog to recover.

I think there should be legislation for particular types of dogs to have to wear muzzles while they are in a public park.

With the muzzle they can still smell and run around freely without causing any potential danger to dogs or humans.

Michelle Lau, via email

 Unfair stigma for pitbulls

 Re “Dangerous dogs – much talk, little action” (CN, May 25). Firstly, I would like to say, there is no such thing as a dangerous dog. Just a dangerous owner. Any dog is capable of being aggressive or a threat to a person.

Secondly, the description you gave about a “pitbull-type dog” is wrong; 70 to 80 kilos? That’s as much as the world’s biggest pitbull; 80kgs would make it a bullmastiff, not a pitbull.

Thirdly, it’s through the prejudice of the media and uneducated people who create a drama about pitbulls when they don’t even know what they look like. It’s unfair to people who have owned and loved a pitbull to have people come up and say: “What a beautiful dog, what is it?” and then when you tell them it’s a pitbull they stop patting them. That’s the stigma the media creates.

Bato Jutsu, via email

 Amazed at dumb merging

AS a frequent driver around Canberra, often in peak hour, it never ceases to amaze me the drivers’ lack of knowledge of merging.

Do they not know that a broken line means give way to the traffic into which they are merging. Numerous times I have been in a double line of traffic doing 90km/h with nowhere to go and drivers will just drive into my lane without even slowing, causing me and everyone behind me to brake sharply.

Please slow down until you can merge safely and check out “Merging Traffic Rules” which state: “On roads where there are lines marked on the road – if your lane comes to an end, you must give way to traffic already in the lane you are moving to.” Enough said. It sure grinds my gears.

 Pat Dickson, via email

Troubled by statistics

NICK Jensen is right when he warns that people with Down syndrome are being eradicated from our society (“Society’s disabled view of ‘perfect'”, May 25).

As Jensen points out, 96 per cent of pregnancies where the infant is detected to have Down syndrome are aborted in Australia. I can’t be the only one to find these statistics troubling.

Surely it is time for the medical community to stop promoting abortion as a routine option after a positive prenatal test for conditions like Down syndrome. While I have no doubt that many of the doctors and nurses involved have good intentions, they are essentially promoting a discriminatory policy against people with Down syndrome.

Down syndrome is not a death sentence. Men and women with Down syndrome can and do live meaningful and full lives like the rest of us.

We urgently need to rethink our attitudes to people with this disability, if we are to prevent the tragedy of their elimination before birth.

Belle Joseph, Hackett

 Look after our own first

I AGREE with Elisha McMurray (“Don’t cut the aid budget”, letters, May 25), it really is sad that so many people overseas are starving and dying, but let us look at it from another angle.

I have heard from a number of sources that most of the overseas aid money never gets to where it is meant i.e. the starving millions. Quite often it goes to fund the rulers into a life of luxury.

One story I heard some time ago was a shipment of grain was sent to an African nation suffering drought and the grain sat on the docks so long it was eaten by the rats. The starving millions (of human beings) got nothing. The most realistic way out of this situation is to send advisers, builders and co-ordinators to provide aid and distribute food, that way at least the help would get where it is intended not into the pockets of the already rich leaders.

I read an article in an overseas newspaper that India neither asked for nor wanted the financial aid they were getting. So why on earth are they getting it or even accepting it?

The other side of the story is there are a lot of starving people here in Australia. Homeless people on the streets, old people and people who can’t find work for one reason or another. People who are homeless cannot get Centrelink because they do not have an address. They cannot get a job because they are homeless. They are in a no-win situation. How about we do something to help these people here? Should we not be looking after our own?

The government is trying to reduce expenditure to reduce the deficit. Most of the legislation put forward to get the country back in the black is being blocked by the Labor Party so they have to do something and if this means cutting foreign aid then so be it, sad as it is

Vi Evans via email