Catlady, I understand your concerns but I so wish you hadn't chosen to express them here and perhaps put people off from signing this particular petition.

Following the links in my first post should reassure anyone who has doubts that this is a genuine issue. For example Dogs Trust, who made me aware of the issue, is an old and well respected charity who does exceptional work here in the UK and in whom I have complete confidence.

As for the petition site hosts, the following, cut and pasted from said site, makes their stance clear.

The Citizens against Dog ban Petition to Dublin City Council was created by ANVIL Ireland and written by Miriam Anderson ([email protected]). The petition is hosted here at PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

PetitionOnline.com has disabled the display of email addresses for signatories who chose to make their address public. We have done this to reduce the spread of harmful Windows viruses which harvest email addresses from the web cache of infected computers. This also prevents spammers from harvesting email addresses from this site.