A man has been left with no choice but to sew a badge on his dog’s harness that reads ‘I am not an XL Bully’ because people keep giving his pet dirty looks.

Matt Stait, 52, from Chepstow, South Wales, says he’s been getting funny looks from other dog owners ever since the XL Bully’s went on a horrifically bad PR run these last few weeks. His seven-year-old American bulldog named Eddie is now being silently judged and ‘ostracised’ by other people, and it’s a shame because he’s such a beautiful boy. Especially when he was a pup:

Matt decided to order the £5 badge off Etsy and funnily enough, since posting about it on Facebook, has been inundated with requests for them. Matt says:

‘Lots of people have confused my dog with an XL bully so I ordered them because I want them to start a conversation.

We used to get a lot of interest for a positive reason but now it’s different. People aren’t saying they’re avoiding us on purpose but that’s what’s happening.

Even the people who know me, know the dog and would previously come over to stroke Eddie would avoid coming near us at all.

You get a lot of dirty looks and you don’t know how much of that is paranoia because they’ve been reading these stories about attacks.’

‘There’s always been an element of people picking up their children and small dogs and crossing the street but I’m seeing that more and more now.’

You might think that no one would ever get close enough to Eddie to even read the badge, rendering it completely useless, but Matt says people now come up to him all the time and admit they didn’t know Eddie was different to an XL Bully.

Even still, Matt is worried the XL bully ban may cover American Bulldogs (as they are technically a ‘bully’ breed), and this would mean they wouldn’t be allowed to train, go to kennels or visit camp sites with ‘no-banned-breed policies’.

‘Here lies the issue with who should own the dogs and what requirements there should be. Overall I’m not for banning specific breeds and I’d look towards licensing and much tighter rules for breeders like compulsory training and suitability checks.

The dogs don’t actually have a voice and unfortunately the people who do have a voice and are loud aren’t necessarily informed.’

Matt says Eddie is a ‘typical representation’ of his breed and has guarding instincts, but the right training means he doesn’t cause trouble. Great to hear the new badge is having the desired effect, though if more people raised their pets like Matt does, there wouldn’t be any need for it.

For the owner of 18 new XL Bully puppies who has no idea what to do with them now that they are about to be banned, click HERE.