Today I was online, and I saw a link to
this editorial written by a retired South Florida police detective. In essence, it says that given the huge number of pit bull maulings in the United States, pit bulls ought to be banned and restricted everywhere. If you read the story without any background, you'd get the impression that hundreds of people are being killed and maimed by pit bulls every day, and he goes on to cite some statistics collected from a well-known pit bull-hating organization whose name I won't mention (because I really don't want to drive traffic to their site – most people who follow this stuff will already know who I mean anyway).
The story references a pretty horrific attack that took place in Titusville, Fla., about an hour from where I live. A child was mauled by a dog that was tied to a tree out front of a house, and she'll likely be scarred for life, both mentally and physically. I really think the person who owns that dog ought to be facing some serious penalties for his out-of-control, unvaccinated, unattended animal. If any attack was completely and 100 percent avoidable, it was this one.
But as unfair and brutal as the attack on this girl was, this kind of behavior by dogs is the exception and not the rule. Considering the number of dogs that live among us – 68 million, according to the
most recent study (2001) of non-fatal dog bites resulting in ER visits, according to CDC – just a fraction end up biting someone, much less sending someone to the hospital.
In 2001, an estimated 68 million canines were kept as pets in the United States (6). This report is the first that uses data from an ongoing surveillance system to provide national estimates of the number of dog bite--related injuries treated in EDs. In 2001, an estimated 368,245 persons were treated for dog bites in EDs; this finding is consistent with a previous estimate of 334,000 persons treated annually for dog bites in EDs during 1992--1994 (2). Of the estimated 368,245 persons treated for dog bites in EDs, an estimated 154,625 (42%) were aged <14 years. Higher rates of dog bites for children aged <14 years also are consistent with previous reports (1,7). Narrative comments from medical records describing dog bite events underscore the importance of prevention messages.
If you do the math, that's a little more than half of a percent of all dogs in the nation that injure someone seriously enough to send them to a hospital. Far, far fewer dogs actually kill people -- in a 1997 report the CDC did on fatal dog attacks, the agency counted 279 fatal attacks on people over a span of 15 years, from 1979 through 1994.
It's also interesting to note that, in that same report, a table shows that while "pit bull" as a breed is represented at the top of the list of breeds with the most bites (60) for which a breed was known over that same time span, pit bulls only made up for less than a third of all fatal bites. 139 dogs of various other breeds also killed people and lots of breeds were represented. Which means what, exactly? Well, if you ask the CDC – and I often find myself wondering why more people don't, and instead turn to fanatical organizations with clear agendas to get their info rather than a government agency tasked with trying to figure out these kinds of things from a non-hysterical perspective – they mean pretty much nothing in and of themselves, except that we need to do better as a society preventing dog bites and that we should be taking our animal control agencies more seriously so they can do a better job keeping tabs on problem people and animals.
And look, the CDC even lays out a few suggestions here for making us all safer from dangerous dogs:
Three categories of strategies can be considered for preventing dog bites:
1. Owner and public education. Dog owners, through proper selection, socialization, training, care, and treatment of a dog, can reduce the likelihood of owning a dog that will eventually bite (7). Male and unspayed/unneutered dogs are more likely to bite than are female and spayed/neutered dogs (7). Educational and prevention efforts should be directed at parents and children. Veterinarians and pediatricians should address strategies for bite prevention, including the need for appropriate supervision of children. Other strategies include dissemination of information on preventing bites (see box(Table_B1)), school-based educational programs on bite prevention and canine behavior, and educational programs regarding responsible dog selection, ownership, and training.
2. Animal control at the community level. Animal-control programs should be supported, and laws for regulating dangerous or vicious dogs should be promulgated and enforced vigorously (8). For example, in this report, 30% of DBRFs resulted from groups of owned dogs that were free roaming off the owner's property. Some of these deaths might have been prevented through more stringent animal-control laws and enforcement. Although some breeds were disproportionately represented in the fatal attacks described in this report, the representation of breeds changes over time (Table_1). As a result, targeting a specific breed may be unproductive; a more effective approach may be to target chronically irresponsible dog owners (9).
3. Bite reporting. Evaluation of prevention efforts requires improved surveillance for dog bites. Dog bites should be reported as required by local or state ordinances, and reports of such incidents should include information about the circumstances of the bite; ownership, breed, sex, age, spay/neuter status, and history of prior aggression of the animal; and the nature of restraint before the bite incident.
Dogs provide many health and social benefits (10). Most of the approximately 55 million dogs in the United States never bite or kill humans. However, the findings in this report indicate that DBRFs continue to occur and that most are preventable.
That last bit was published in 1997 ... a long time ago. And you know what I take from it? That we're still spinning our wheels and saying the same things more than a decade later, but nobody's doing a damn thing to really see to it that we're doing 2 or 3. Over and over again, dog-bite reporting in the news points to people who complain about lack of response from animal-control and law-enforcement agencies to complaints from the community regarding dogs that are abused, neglected, menacing or at-large. And those same stories are full of frustrated complaints from animal control and law enforcement that they don't have enough money or resources to do a better job protecting communities and tending to problem owners and their animals. And who's doing comprehensive and scientifically sound surveillance of bite reporting, according to local and state ordinances these days, anyway? Very few, if any ... and most bite reporting we do get is based on newspaper reports gathered up by advocacy groups who have agendas (either pro-dog or anti-dog).
As for point 1, I see a lot of community groups trying to pick up and educate and larger animal-advocacy orgs trying to pick up the slack where our health departments and other larger agencies aren't. But what's our overarching stance, and who, exactly, is in charge of making sure we're disseminating the information parents and dog owners need to do their part to prevent dog bites? I'm not sure there really is one.
So, what's our response as a community? Well, it's all over the place, and a lot of it is emotional response, not reasoned response. Such as the editorial I cited above. And that editorial suggests we ban pit bulls all over the country to make people safer.
But let's look at those numbers cited by the CDC in its table again. If, from 1970-1996, pit bulls were responsible for 60 fatal dog attacks, as the CDC calculates, that still leaves 139 fatal dog attacks. If we banned the pit bulls, that means we have failed to prevent two-thirds of fatal dog attacks because we were so busy banning the pit bulls that we didn't bother to do the other very important things the CDC suggests would make us all safer from dogs of
all breeds that bite. We've invested money and resources that could be going to animal control agencies that could be doing more to remove dogs from dangerous conditions, that could be going to law enforcement to train them to handle criminal animal-control cases (you'd be surprised, if you talked to some law-enforcement agencies, how little input or training they actually have or think they have over animal-control related problems), and to communities that could be (should be) enforcing preventative laws (licensing laws, rabies vaccine laws, dog-at-large laws, leash laws in general). And overall, if you're doing all of those things, you're not just protecting people from the pit bulls but from all of the dangerous dogs in the community.
I've said this before, but it bears repeating (or maybe I just like the sound of my own voice): It does not good to ban the friendly pit bull if you've got a very violent dog of any other breed living in your community that isn't being controlled properly.
