Dog Bites Becoming U.S. Epidemic
A top dog trainer says dog bites in the United States are at “epidemic proportions.”
Every year more than 4.5 million Americans — more than half of them children — are bitten by dogs, said the American Humane Association ahead of National Dog Bite Prevention Week, which begins Sunday.
Insurers paid more than US$483 million in dog bite claims in 2013. Plastic surgeons performed 26,935 operations to repair injuries caused by dog bites.
And the US Postal Service said 5,581 of its employees were attacked last year.
“The dog bite situation in America is at epidemic proportions — in Europe less so, but still a huge issue,” British-born dog trainer and television presenter Victoria Stilwell, host of the reality series “It’s Me or the Dog,” told AFP.
“Everywhere needs to take the situation very seriously,” said Stilwell at a media event in Washington attended by Elle, a mellow therapy dog that happens to be a pit bull.
Stiwell appealed for greater education and awareness among dog owners and the public — as well as better-trained dogs.
fahvel May 16th, 2014 at 2:54 am
so????? Ya got 300+million people with that many guns and dogs – what does one expect????
Aielyn May 16th, 2014 at 9:05 am
It is *not* an epidemic… unless someone is asserting that either the dogs or the people being bitten catch it from other dogs/people. It’s not an epidemic – you might call it endemic, perhaps, even a pandemic… but there’s no disease involved.
Vocabulary is important.
Jake May 16th, 2014 at 11:59 pm
Any second now the “its not the dogs it’s the bad owners” crowd will start their whining. The only group with a sense of entitlement massive enough to match that of gun owners is dog owners.
arc99 May 17th, 2014 at 12:11 am
well I am a dog owner and I wish you would explain how pointing out how it is not a case of bad owners when PEOPLE fail to properly socialize, confine and control their pets as circumstances require.
It is not a sense of “entitlement” to point out he obvious that ultimately the responsibility is for PEOPLE to be responsible whether they have a Chihahua or a Great Pyrenees.
All dogs will bite if they find themselves in a situation they find intolerable and there is no other option to flee. Call it “entitlement” if you wish when I point that out. I refer to it as a fact of life. It is people, not dogs who are the problem.
SteveD May 25th, 2014 at 6:07 pm
Thanks 99, your comments are always appreciated. Jake can’t. His two sentence comment is entirely illogical to begin with. There is no correlation. It’s a juvenile apples and oranges comparison. Laws in virtually every American jurisdiction render his first sentence plainly WRONG. It’s utter nonsense. Idiocy abounds, my friend.