Tags: | Last updated: July 20, 2014
Rottweiler (Wikimedia)
As the weather warms and more children play outside, the unfortunate but predictable phenomenon of dog bites and attacks inevitably comes back into the news. Conditioned to find the proverbial “man bites dog” narrative, reporters often write an obligatory one-time story about such incidents. But it may be worth putting dog attacks into a larger context, acknowledging both the scope of this continuing public health problem, the research history and the ambiguity of some typical policies proposed. That perspective can serve as an antidote both to sensationalism and overreaction and to indifference — dogs have lived with humans for centuries, after all — toward a systemic problem that might be substantially alleviated.
Roughly 4.4 million people a year are bitten by a dog in the United States, resulting in an estimated 885,000 injuries that require medical attention, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). About half of these injuries are sustained by children. Some 31,000 people required reconstructive surgery because of dog bites in the year 2006 alone. Hospital costs for these injuries are estimated at more than $100 million annually.
A 2008 study in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association surveyed more than 800 dog owners and concluded that “dog owners frequently had only limited knowledge of dog behavior and often were unaware of factors that increased the risk of dog bites to children.” The paper recommends further “education of dog owners regarding dog behavior, including body language, social signals, resource-guarding, and self-defense, and the risks of dog bites to infants and young children.”
As the American Veterinary Medical Association noted in a comprehensive 2001 report titled “A Community Approach to Dog Bite Prevention,” towns and cities are often spurred to action by a particularly severe dog attack case, but the responses are not always effective and policy debates can divide communities. The report notes:
An often-asked question is what breed or breeds of dogs are most “dangerous.” This inquiry can be prompted by a serious attack by a specific dog, or it may be the result of media-driven portrayals of a specific breed as “dangerous.” Although this is a common concern, singling out one or two breeds for control can result in a false sense of accomplishment. Doing so ignores the true scope of the problem and will not result in a responsible approach to protecting a community’s citizens. Dog bite statistics are not really statistics, and they do not give an accurate picture of dogs that bite. Invariably the numbers will show that dogs from popular large breeds are a problem. This should be expected, because big dogs can physically do more damage if they do bite, and any popular breed has more individuals that could bite. Dogs from small breeds also bite and are capable of causing severe injury.
The issue of the risks associated with certain dog breeds — in particular, whether pit pulls and Rottweilers are always significantly more dangerous — is a controversial one. The CDC issued a report on the issue, “Breeds of Dogs Involved in Fatal Human Attacks in the United States between 1979 and 1998.” However, the CDC warns that the report “does not identify specific breeds that are most likely to bite or kill, and thus is not appropriate for policy-making decisions related to the topic.” On average approximately 16 people in the United States die annually as a result of dog attacks, the CDC notes, and thus it is difficult to draw strong statistical conclusions about particular breeds. Still, the numbers in the report highlight patterns that align with common sense: Great Danes and chow chows, for example, were involved in few fatal incidents, while pit bull-types and Rottweilers were involved in more than 100 fatal incidents over the period 1979-1998. (For more on this research, see the report’s abstract below.) Some researchcontinues to call into question any strong association specifically between dog breed and the likelihood of fatalities.
Research has suggested that educating children — who are bitten at much higher rates than adults — may be an effective way of helping to prevent injuries; video programs have even been explored for very young children. However, some researchers believe there is not enough evidence to suggest that such education programs are effective. Scholars have also investigated how best to educate parents, and a 2003 study concluded that perhaps two-thirds of child injuries might be prevented through parental education. In any case, some studies have shown that unsupervised children, in particular, are vulnerable, and that family pets, once they bite, may be likely to do so again.
http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/municipal/dog-bites-attacks-research-review
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