Dog Bite Statistics - Are We Being Lied to by Politicians With a Hidden ‘Dangerous Dog’ Agenda?
Posted By Alison Green Date: 4/03 Posted Under: Breed Specific Legislation, Canine Columns, Dangerous DogsFigures released to Norman Lamb of the Liberal democrats have been splashed all over the media alongside headlines proclaiming a rise in “dog attacks”. Pictures of snarling beasts, most often bull breeds or the current “devil dog” the Rottweiler have been used to help emphasise the point.
But wait one second…STOP THE PRESS… the figures do not show a rise in dog attacks. Allow me to explain.
A few years ago I did an awful thing.
I was at a barbeque on a lovely summers day with my family and our dogs. My children where playing with the other children and one of my dogs was playing with the resident boxer, the sun was shining and all was right with the world. My dog tired of his game with the boxer, picked up his ball before dropping it in my lap and sitting down looking at me hopefully. I smiled, picked up the ball and threw it for him.
The minute that ball left my hand I realised what I had done and yelled loudly to recall my dog but it was too late. As I yelled, my dog ran straight into my daughter knocking her flying down on the hard ground. Thankfully my daughter, although bruised and sore for a while, had no broken bones. My dog didn’t know what had happened but had stopped, ball forgotten and gone over to lick at my daughter. I was mortified and have never taken a ball to another barbeque since!
Had my daughter been more badly hurt and been admitted to hospital, she would have been included in the recent figures paraded around the media as “dog attacks”.
What the media and Norman Lamb fail to mention in any article I have read, is that the figures do not separate dog bites from dog strikes. I know of quite a few people who have been admitted to hospital because their dogs greeted them a little too enthusiastically or accidentally knocked into them.
They will all be logged under the same code meaning “bitten or struck by a dog” yet the two meanings are often very different and certainly don’t scream “dog attack”. Many people have been struck by dogs, many have been bitten by dogs however few have been attacked by dogs. While even one true dog attack is unacceptable the medias use of these figures to “show” an overwhelming increase in dog attacks is misleading and nothing more than scaremongering.
The media have also focused on the “rise” in certain areas but do not seem to be aware of the fact that the strategic health authority for treatment restructured at the start of 2006 which, according to Ben Bradshaw when he supplied the figures to Norman lamb as a written answer, means a direct comparison is not possible before and after 2006.
Hospital workers are also “ a bit bemused” by the figures. It has recently been reported in one online newspaper that hospital bosses in west mids where surprised at the “findings” of an 80% increase in under 18’s being admitted due to “dog attacks”.
A spokesman for George eliot hospital in Nuneaton told a reporter for IC Coventry
Although we don’t have access to detailed statistics, we can say anecdotally that, if anything, the number of people needing treatment for dog bites is falling.
“We’re a bit bemused by these figures, to be honest. We don’t get anywhere near as many as we used to.”
The article goes on to state:
The same sentiment was also expressed by spokesmen for the University Hospital, Coventry, Warwick Hospital, and the Hospital of St Cross, in Rugby.
Maybe they are “bemused” because the figures are being stated as something they aren’t!
In recent years it has been pointed out that children 9 and under are more commonly admitted for “bites or strikes” from a dog and this is true. However over the last ten years in England, the number of children 9 and under who have been admitted to hospital for this reason, has actually risen the least of all age groups, by 4.1%. This equals just 39 more admissions when comparing 06-07 with 96-97. Using the same years comparison, the age group of 40-49 year olds show a massive increase of 136%. We rarely hear of large numbers of 40 odd year olds being attacked by dogs so would it be fair to assume we are actually looking at more strikes than bites?
It is not unusual for smaller children to be admitted to hospital more often than adults as a precaution. I completely agree with the reasons for doing so. Children are much more fragile and less able to tell you if there is a problem. If my children bang their heads I turn into the most paranoid mother about, constantly checking on them. Better to be safe than sorry so could this possibly explain the large number of young children being admitted? Children are also more likely to be knocked over by dogs simply walking or running past them.
There are many reasons that could contribute to any increase and could help explain why certain age groups are showing high numbers. The only thing the figures do not show is a definite increase in dog attacks.
The dog world does have problems and they are problems that need tackling. We, as dog owners, parents and members of the public, have all been let down time and time again by the law. The Dangerous Dogs Act was meant to protect us 16 years ago. It failed. Now the same people who helped bring in that law, are trying again!
The answer to our problems is simple. We need to look at facts and not create mass hysteria by telling only half of the story. We need to log dog bites and strikes separately and in more detail. We need to know what the injury is, who, where and why. We need to ensure we all know how to act responsibly and safely around dogs.
We need a law that holds the owners responsible for their dog’s actions and ensure they are fully equipped to deal with the responsibility that comes with owning any dog BEFORE they obtain one.
Norman Lamb has got one thing right. He is quoted in several articles as saying
“No-one knowingly puts their child in danger but it seems that the message is not getting through.”
So lets make a Dog Ownership Test a legal requirement and force that message home.
Author DetailsAlison is a long time dog owner and dangerous dog legislation observer who lives with her family and four Bull Breed dogs in Sussex. - See this author's webpage
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Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 3:02 am and is filed under Breed Specific Legislation, Canine Columns, Dangerous Dogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Every child that ends up in hospital because of some stupid dog owners is another tragedy. Hiding behind these statistical anomolies is merely defending the indefensible.
Every time I am in a UK park, there are dogs running around without leads in family areas. The only change I would make to the laws would be to incarcerate the dogs and have the owners put down instead of visa versa when another child is mauled, maimed or killed.
The problems with dog bite reporting have always been a bone (sorry the pun) of contention. Except for hospital injury data (where injuries are ranked on an objective scale of severity), simple dog “bites” are typically intermingled with “attacks” and even “fatality” statistics.
I agree that dog bite statistics leave a lot to be desired. Novices to the field are often quickly confused or overwhelmed.
The breed of dog is irrelevant, when it comes to unprovoked attacks, but even those designations are grossly subjective, and never verified in any meaningful way, in my experience. The behavioural histories of biting dogs are rarely, if ever, verified by anyone in a position of authority. The cause of, or conditions relating to, the bite/injury are seldom even noted, much less confirmed or even considered, for future preventative measures.
As you correctly contend, a person suffering a serious injury because he/she tripped over a dog, might be considered equally with someone who suffered a serious, but inadvertent, injury caused when both the person and dog reached for an item at the same time (humans use their hands, dogs use their teeth), as might someone innocently minding his/her own business, and being mauled by an at-large dog. All are very different scenarios, with different potential methods of prevention. Yet all could end up being counted equally, in obtuse dog bite/injury statistics.
In my experience, the vast majority of dog bite reports do, in fact, involve dog bites. As you correctly point out, though, not all dog-related injuries are the result of bites.
Any credible agency or statistician categorizes these kinds of injuries in the following ways:
- dog-related (i.e. tripping over a dog or its leash, suffering a heart attack after being jumped on by a dog)
- dog bite-related (i.e. getting an infection via broken skin contacting/caused by a dog’s teeth)
- dog bite injury-related (i.e. losing a finger which was severed by a dog’s bite)
Furthermore, there are “bites” (a single bite and release), “attacks” (multiple bites, or serious injury resulting from a sustained tearing or shaking bite or bites), and “fatalities” (where the individual’s death was the direct result of injuries caused by a dog during an attack).
Dog bites are further categorized by being either “provoked” or “unprovoked”. (While, from the dog’s perspective, all dog bites are likely “provoked,” there are few reasonable people who’d suggest a dog doesn’t have a right to defend itself from an actual attack by a human. As a result, dog bite statistics related to public safety should be limited to those deemed “unprovoked.”)
I find it exceedingly common for these categories to be confused, and for conclusions to be drawn using misinterpreted data.
Overall, dog bite statistics are primarily kept at the municipal level, and very, very few of those municipalities have created an objective method for differentiating between “bites” and “attacks”. For the most part, those who claim one kind/size of dog causes more severe injuries than others typically have no verifiable basis for their views.
Dog bite-related human deaths, while rare, are a bit better defined. After all, death is rather definitive.
As for “attacks”, hospital data tends to be the most reliable, in this regard. Hospitals use an objective scale for indicating the severity of an injury. In America, just one out of every eleven estimated dog bites receives medical attention. Of those, fewer than one percent are above the lowest category for hospital injury reporting. In short, over ninety-nine percent of U.S. dog bites are no more serious than, say, a skinned knee.
Dog bite injury-related human fatalities are extremely, extremely rare events. It is more common for people to die tripping over their own slippers, than to be killed by a dog. In this rare (dog-related) category, some of the breeds listed as having killed a person include victims who died of heart attacks after a dog jumped on them, or tripped over a dog’s leash, and suffered a fatal head injury.
In America, a Bureau of Labor study found cows were 14 times more likely than a dog to kill someone in the workplace. Most of those deaths were the result of cattle “attacks”. Yet none of the dog-related workplace fatalities were attributed to dog attacks. Nearly all were the result of workers (during the act of driving) hitting, or swerving to avoid hitting, a dog in the roadway, and crashing his/her vehicle, leading to the worker’s death. One of the dog-related deaths in the Bureau of Labor study involved a worker who died due to a heart attack suffered after attempting to lift a heavy dog.
…Not exactly the ‘fatal dog maulings’ most people think of when they see some of these dog-related injury stat’s.
I wish people would do some actual research (not just Google searches) before forming opinions. I wish people would stop citing their local media as their source. (Too often, they have it totally wrong.) Just as important, is understanding the data one has researched, to be sure conclusions are relevant, and actually supported by the data. For example, one of the most popular studies poorly-informed people use to support breed-specific legislation actually cautions against a breed-based approach to dog control, in the study’s own conclusions.)
What can’t be argued is the fact that universally, 99.9% of all dogs, regardless of breed, size, or original breed purpose, will never be involved in an attack at any time in their lives. Dogs will never compare as hazards with parents, relatives, friends, automobiles, sports, swimming pools, bicycles, balloons, marbles, five gallon buckets, and on and on and on.
Unsupervised, poorly-socialised, and poorly-trained dogs make up nearly all the dogs involved in unprovoked biting incidents. All these factors relate to owner responsibility, rather than anything to do with the dog.
Dog bite data is useful, but only if we consider the kinds of information that would help us prevent future biting incidents. At this time, ticking off biting dogs by breed or size or original breed purpose will do little (if anything) to improve the situation.
So, while some are focused on that, regions that target habitually-negligent dog owners, and promote (truly) responsible dog ownership and public education programs have seen the biggest improvements in dog-related problems, including biting. When society addresses “why” dogs bite, we lower dog bite rates.
No matter what the total number of (unprovoked) bites might be, the cause always comes back to an irresponsible dog owner. In nearly a decade of dog bite reserach, I didn’t find one, responsibly-owned dog involved in an unprovoked attack. …Not one. I also found every, single dog involved in an attack that I investigated had a known history of aggressive behaviour (despite common denials by owners or the media). Simply put, when a dog is well-trained, properly socialised, and adequately supervised, it doesn’t bite unprovoked. When owners allow/encourage aggressive behaviours in their dogs, they are significantly more (almost exclusively) likely to be involved in a biting incident, one day.
Again, until we actually put measures in place to ensure dogs are responsibly-owned and/or to remove them from the care of owners who refuse to do so, we will continue to have unprovoked biting incidents, and we won’t be doing anything helpful to reduce those numbers, in the future.
The Liberal Democrats meander around the palaces of power trying to think up ways of being more popular to the electorate and decide as most Liberal Democrats do to jump on the band wagon of the latest fad, which in this instance is ‘review the dangerous dogs act and look at what breeds are on it/should be added to it’. While they were warming up their crackpot ideas machine somebody must have hit the button that churned out ‘rise in dog bite statistics’. What Norman Lamb fails to realise is that hospitals used to collate all ‘bites’ together and as was discovered by a number of organisations, there were more ‘bites’ on people from other people than from dogs!
Where did the Liberals get their statistics from and who are their advisors on dog related issues?
Yet another great own goal from a party that would put breed specific legislation forward as a vote winner, no wonder they are always last!
Instead of calling for a review with a mind to add more breeds, they should ask for the DDA to be scrapped altogether, now that would probably be a vote winner?