We have been here before. A woman is attacked by a dog. She is treated at the scene but the medics cannot save her. Her friends and family talk about the grief they’re feeling. The dog is destroyed. As I say, we have been here before, many times. And yet still we don’t talk about what’s really going on.

A few more facts about the attack. The woman who died was 41-year-old Michelle McLeod. The dog was thought to be an American Bulldog called Bailey. The attack happened while Ms McLeod and Bailey were in her flat on Foresterhill Road in Aberdeen. Turns out Bailey had attacked another dog in the same area in June and Ms McLeod had been charged. The owner of the dog that was attacked said Bailey had been muzzled but the muzzle wasn’t fitted properly.

Now the legal bit. American Bulldogs like Bailey are not banned in the UK but they are closely related to the XL Bully which is. Also banned in the UK is the pit bull terrier, Japanese Tosa, Dogo Argentino and Fila Braziliero. They were banned because of attacks like the one on Ms McLeod and the motivation was good: the aim was to try and prevent further attacks from happening.

But the law is a mess. Some powerful and potentially dangerous dogs are banned, some are not. We also discovered this week that despite the Scottish ban on XL Bullies being introduced in August, more than 3,000 of the dogs are still in the country. What it suggests is the ban isn’t working just as previous........

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