2009 Dog Bite Fatalities Final Report
This is my least favorite post I do every year because I don't like dwelling on the negative stuff, but because there is a lot of misleading information out there on this topic that I feel like having all of the attacks in a central location will at least allow people to have easy access to the actual data.
Before I get into the information, there are a couple of things that I want to note:
1) Fatal incidents are extremely rare. With about 75 million dogs in the US, and 32 fatal dog attacks each year, they are such a statistically anomoly that decisions on "breed" aggression should not be based on such rare incidents. By comparison, the US Population is 300 million (4x the dog population) and saw over 16,000 murders (500x the number of dog-related deaths). If only humans could be close to as safe as dogs.
2) When you look at fatal incidents, the circumstances surrounding them usually follow a couple of different criteria that will become obvious when you read. It is my hope that by seeing the circumstances behind the attacks we can eliminate many future attacks so these tragedies can be avoided.
3) If people track bite information only by breed, without tracking the information by circumstances, the only correlation they can come up with for attacks is by breed and have missed the most obvious conclusion.
4) The vast majority of my data, including breed ID, comes from media sources, so they come with the inherant ID issues that come from visual breed identification and from media mis-reporting.
5) The difference in media exposure for the different breeds of dogs is extremely notable.
In total, there were 33 dog-bite related fatalities (32 events) in 2009.
-- 16 different dog breeds, or mixes thereof, were involved (counting 'mixed breed' as it's own category).
-- 9 cases involved chained dogs
-- 8 cases were in areas that were affected with high poverty rates
-- 4 cases involved packs of feral or near feral dogs
-- 3 involved newborns
-- of the 5 incidents that were covered by 150 media sources or more, 2 involved 'pit bulls', 1 involved a Rottweiler, 1 involved a pit bull/akita mix (that was widely reported as a 'pit bull mix') and 1 involved a Weimaraner.
-- There were 7 incidents that were covered by fewer than 6 media outlets, the breeds involved were Husky, Chow Chow, Husky, Boxers, Australian Shepherd/Blue Heeler mixes and a Great Dane.
Yes, apparently all attacks are not created equally in the eyes of the media.
The attacks fall into roughly 4 categories:
1) Children under 1 year of age: 5 fatalities -- 3 of the children were less than 3 weeks old. 3 different breeds of dogs were involved. Introducing a child into a family with a dog can be tricky, and takes a little dedication by the owners/parents. This is why I recommend any newly expecting parent to read sites dedicated to dog training with young children. I interviewed the founder of one such organization, Jennifer Shyrock of Dogs & Storks earlier this year and this is a great first source for expecting parents who own dogs.
2) Children 1 year to 5 years -- I've chosen this division because this is roughly the area where children become mobile, yet are still too young to be truly able to deal with most situations unsupervised. 13 of the fatalities fell into this category -- 8 different breeds were involved. In 9 of the attacks, the child was left unsupervised -- in 4 of those, the child left the house under their own accord. Chaining appears to have played a role in 8 of the 13 attacks (I'll talk a little bit more about this in a separate post later in the week).
3) Older Children - 5-15 years of age - There were two attacks here, two different breeds of dogs involved. Chaining was a factor in one of the two attacks.
4) Adults - 12 victims here, in 11 different incidences. Nine different breeds of dogs involved. In 5 of the cases (6 victims), victims were attacked by a pack of dogs -- with anywhere from 3 to 16 dogs being involved. Most of these cases involved wild or feral dogs. In two of the cases, the victim got in the middle of two other dogs either fighting or breeding and was attacked. Four cases involved individual dogs (with four different breeds involved). Six of the victims were over the age of 65, with 3 of them being over the age of 85.
It appears that major improvements could be made in preventing these attacks if we did the following:
1) Worked harder to educate new parents how to socialize their pets with newborn children.
2) Emphasized supervising younger children when they interact with dogs.
3) End the process of leaving dogs chained 24/7 as their primary or sole form of containment.
4) Educate owners that early signs of aggression should be dealt with through training and socialization and not avoided. Many of the dogs involved had previously shown signs of aggression.
5) Deal with large packs of wild and feral dogs.