What happened
Bonnie Allan, 41, owned two Staffordshire bull terriers, Kie and Tritan. On 25 August 2023 a man came to speak to her at a corner shop in Maryhill. STV News identifies him as a housing officer. He left the shop and both dogs lunged at him. The prosecutor said Allan “did not tie them up properly”. He was treated for a puncture bite and bruising.
On 31 January 2024 Kevin Gumble, 39, was with Allan and the terriers in the city centre when the dogs “aggressively lunged” at him. One latched onto his forearm and he was chewed on the arm. He told police: “Kie had hold of my left arm and Tritan had hold of my right forearm.” He woke in hospital needing operations; his nerve was exposed and he needed skin grafts, which left scarring.
The outcome
Allan was found guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court of being the owner of two dogs that were dangerously out of control, at a retrial she attended from custody after absconding before the first. Sentence was deferred for background reports by Sheriff Barry Divers.
In July 2025 the Glasgow Times reported a warrant after she failed to appear. No report read gives a sentence, and this page does not supply one.
What went wrong
No report attributes the attack to an employer. What they show is a housing officer meeting a tenant in the street with two dogs that were not secured, and no check made him safe before he spoke.
The bigger failure spans both attacks. Five months separate them, and the same two dogs were loose in public for both. Nothing recorded shows a dog control condition, a muzzling requirement or a formal warning between the attacks, and no report mentions a prosecution before the second one.
The link to work rests on one identification. The Glasgow Times reports the first attack on “another man” and does not say he was working; STV News says he was a housing officer.
What it teaches
A housing visit does not begin at the front door. It begins on the pavement, at the gate, at the shop where the tenant stands with her dogs. A worker who has planned for a living room has planned for the wrong room.
Where dogs are present, the visit has a precondition: the animals are secured before the conversation starts. If they cannot be, the visit does not happen, and the reason goes in writing. A dog that has bitten once and is still loose is a reason to refuse entry, not to be brave.
Our lone working training covers dynamic risk assessment for visits where animals are present.
Questions for the room
- Before a lone visit, do you ask about dogs at the property and on the way to it? Where is your line on entry?
- The housing officer met his tenant at a corner shop. Where does a visit start for you, and who decides when it does not?
- A colleague reports being bitten by a client’s dog. What happens to that address on your system the next day?
- In the first ten minutes after a serious bite, what would you do?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable. Three press reports were read: two from the Glasgow Times and one from STV News, all drawing on the same Glasgow Sheriff Court proceedings. The conviction is reported, the sentence is not, and the last status in the sources is the July 2025 warrant. The pack places the encounter at a corner shop in Maryhill; the vault record calls the setting a client’s home, and the pack’s account is followed. The record also names Cameron Hogg, 34, as a victim, and no report read mentions him.
Sources
Reviewed 20 October 2026.