Pitbull dog named ‘Stella’ locked up by police for two years without exercise

The BBC reports the dog has been held in a 1m x 3m cage in a private kennels in Devon, where staff were told by police that dogs held under the Dangerous Dogs Act are not to be exercised or allowed human interaction.

The RSPCA guidelines issued covering the welfare of seized dogs in kennels states that dogs “must have daily access to outdoor safe and secure areas, away from the kennel area and this should be for at least 30 minutes per day”.

Devon and Cornwall Police told the BBC the dog had been considered potentially dangerous due to its breed, behaviour when it was seized and behaviour during assessments.But Laura Khanlarian, an assistant at the kennel, told the broadcaster that “we were always told not to exercise or go into a kennel with any dogs, regardless of character, that had been brought in under the Dangerous Dogs Act”. She said that for her, animal welfare comes before anything else and not being able to touch the dogs had been hard. 

The dog had reportedly left her kennel twice for behaviour assessments.

The dog, held at a private kennels in Devon, had been seized by police when her owner Antony Hastie was arrested on an unrelated matter in 2014.