More dog bite stories ahead. By and large, I am not scared of dogs. Apart from bullmastiffs.

Bullmastiffs hate my family - or me and my mum, anyway. They are evil.

When my mother was about four months pregnant with my younger brother, she was knocked down a flight of stairs by a bullmastiff. To be fair to the dog, she didn't mean to - a sudden clap of thunder so terrified the dog that she leapt onto my mother. It wasn't until my brother was five years old that he was diagnosed as having cerebral palsy. We don't know for certain the cause of his disability, but I blame the bullmastiff.

Years later, when I was about ten and living in South Africa, one of my dad's sidelines was training dogs for the police. I don't know about these days, but back in the reign of terror, South African police dogs were not pleasant animals. The more vicious, the better. One Saturday afternoon my folks brought home a massive mastiff called Michael from the RSPCA. He was a huge brute with powerful slobbering jaws and a thick neck. We four kids lined up to pat him on the head and welcome him into our family. My sister stroked him, my older brother stroked him, my younger brother stroked him. As I reached out to stroke him, he growled and sank his teeth into my arm. Four stitches later, we got rid of Michael.

Another mastiff, another savaging: My parents were bringing home a bullmastiff which someone wanted to board at our kennels. The dog was in the back of their kombi [what do you call kombis in this country? A van? A minibus? A people-carrier? Whatever]. My mum leaned over the front seat, into the back, to get her handbag, and the dog sank its teeth into her head, cracking her skull.

Nice dogs, bullmastiffs. If I see one now, I give it a wide berth.