WHAT should happen to dangerous dogs once police seize them? They certainly shouldn’t be locked up in a 3ft by 9ft cage for years with no exercise, that’s for sure.

But that’s what happened to Stella, an illegal pit bull breed seized by Devon and Cornwall police in 2014 and put in a private kennels, where she has been kept in a cage ever since.

The police say Stella was judged too dangerous to be exercised as her owner twice used her as a weapon in a threat to attack police before she was seized. An order for Stella’s destruction was issued at Torquay Magistrates Court on February 8 and her owner has 28 days to appeal. The police force has said that Stella has been described as “an extremely dangerous dog” by an animal behaviour expert and the RSPCA.

Something somewhere has clearly gone horribly wrong, as I can’t imagine the police would knowingly make a dog suffer like this. It’s obviously not Stella’s fault that she is dangerous – the blame for that falls squarely on her owner’s shoulders – and I can’t help feeling that her aggression can only have been exacerbated by a lack of exercise (even the most gentle dog would become aggressive under such conditions). It seems Stella is literally stuck in a vicious circle: I can’t believe that an animal behaviour expert can assess the dog’s true nature accurately when she’s kept in such unnatural conditions.

The plight of poor Stella only came to light after Laura Khanlarian, who worked as an assistant at the kennels until 2015, passed footage of Stella and another dog called Vinnie, which has since been put down, to the BBC.

But how many other dogs have suffered the same kind of treatment? They are victims of “the system”, a legal process that can drag on interminably through court rulings, adjournments and endless appeals. Stella’s owner attended court 11 times after she was seized, 10 of them adjournments.

It has left Stella in a caged limbo, and it’s not any individual’s fault. But now that we know how the system has failed these dogs, it’s time the system was examined and changed. Thank goodness Laura Khanlarian, who obviously loves animals, was brave enough to speak out. After all, any private dog owner who did this would be accused of animal neglect or animal cruelty and prosecuted. I’d be very interested to know why the RSPCA failed to monitor Stella’s long incarceration and the resulting lack of exercise and normal dog activities. Is there one rule for privately owned dogs and another for those in police custody?

The kennels staff had been told by the police that Stella was too dangerous to walk but, as her imprisonment continued, the police, the kennels staff and the experts could have found ways around that in order to make her life worth living. Invaluable advice could have been gleaned from wildlife park experts, who have transported and cared for the most dangerous wild animals such as big cats, on ways of regularly transferring Stella from her cage to an outdoors enclosure where she could run around without direct contact with human beings.

Dangerous dogs have the same needs as other dogs and our humane treatment of them should not be clouded by any owners’ treatment of them or indeed by their owners’ crimes.

Stella has been offered a new home at an American pit bull sanctuary in Connecticut and this week the court is due to rule on her fate. I really hope officials can find it in their hearts to give her a get-out clause and that she makes it.

Trump being president is “everyone’s nightmare,” Hollywood actor Richard Gere told the BBC.

Er, actually, no, that’s not true. “Everyone”, ie the US voting public, appears to be voting for Donald Trump to become the Republican nominee, knowing full well that their vote could put him in the White House come November.

While I certainly wouldn’t vote for Trump, I love it when an outrageous outsider shakes up the presidential elections every now and then in the US. The US presidential election process seems to go on forever and, depending on the calibre of the candidates, can be the dullest political event in the world.

But Trump is striking a chord with millions of Americans, something a certain section of US society can’t comprehend. The prevailing public view, as expressed by famous people such as Richard Gere and other Hollywood actors, is that Trump is beyond the pale. But the views of the minority Hollywood glitterati don’t always reflect the views of the majority voting public, who don’t have the pulling power to have their political preferences and their reasons for them reported in the media.

What they do have, though, is the power of the vote. We’ll just have to wait and see.