BY CYNTHIA ARMSTRONG, OKLAHOMA SENIOR STATE DIRECTOR, THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES
OVER THE YEARS I’ve shared my home with a number of purebred and mixed breed dogs including Fox Terriers, Pointers, Chows, Heelers and Pit Bulls. And in my line of work with the Humane Society of the United States, I’ve assisted in responding to a number of large-scale animal cruelty cases and natural disasters involving highly stressed dogs of all shapes and sizes from Rottweilers to Chihuahuas. In those thousands of encounters over the past 14 years, I’ve never been bitten… at least by a dog. A cat named Pepper, that took issue with being loaded into a cat carrier, holds that singular distinction. I attribute some of my good fortune with dogs in those situations to a sensitivity and alertness to their body language but equally important has been the dogs’ ability to adapt to their situation, however stressful, and cope.
What I’ve also learned over time is that dogs really do appreciate the company of people and prefer to live in harmony with them, and people definitely love dogs. In fact, we love them so much that in the United States we share our hearts and homes with approximately 89.7 million of them, according to the most recent American Pet Product Survey for 2017-2018. That’s a whole lot of dogs living in very close proximity with adults, children, adolescents and other pets. It’s been a happy and rewarding history for the most part and testament to the strong bond between canine and human.
That said, in the multitude of daily encounters between man and dog, miscommunications can and do occur—some of those resulting in bites and sometimes more serious injuries and in very rare instances, fatalities. When a serious injury or fatality occurs, it understandably has a riveting effect on the public and policymakers. Everyone desires to make sense of such an uncommon event and learn what steps can be taken, if any, to prevent a similar incident in the future. A common but incorrect assumption is that the dog bite or attack occurred because of the dog’s breed. My colleagues in the animal welfare community and dog training world know that is really not the cause for the disturbing and rare encounter, but too often the myth and hype spiral out of control before cooler and more objective
heads can consider the facts and put those facts in context.
In some cases, this theory of breed-caused aggression can wrongly inspire municipal leaders and/or state legislators to attempt to ban specific breeds of dogs in an effort to gain control of a situation they deem out of control. There are some very compelling findings on the subject of serious and fatal dog attacks, and when lawmakers and the public take time to consider them, they will gain a far better understanding of the issue. First, it is important to recognize that most dogs never bite, and the number of dogs ever involved in a serious or fatal dog attack is extremely low. For example, there were 40 verified dog bite-related fatalities in the U.S. in 2014. They occurred within a human population of 316 million and a canine population estimated at between 70 and 83 million at that time.
In the book, “Dogs Bite But Balloons and Slippers Are More Dangerous,” author Janis Bradley illustrates the unlikely odds of being injured by a dog by researching U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, which show that individuals are far more likely to experience an accidental injury causing an emergency room visit due to falls, blunt objects, cars, overexertion, sharp objects, foreign bodies, poison and bicycles than an injury from a dog bite. Seriously, the research has been conducted, the data
compiled and analyzed, and as it turns out, dogs, in and of themselves, are not the root cause or genesis of attacks, so removing specific breeds from the community will not solve the problem.
In fact, I would submit that breed-specific bans actually create a more serious problem, because public officials assume they’ve made a community safer by prohibiting certain breeds, only to find out they have done nothing of the sort. In reality, what is accomplished by enacting breed-specific bans is a false sense of security because these breed bans over-include dogs of a breed that present no danger and under-include other dogs of various breeds and mixes of breeds that may actually have the potential to be dangerous.
Would you be surprised if I told you that addressing this problem of serious dog injuries has more to do with people and management of their dogs than the breed of dog? Here’s why: Experts know from studying past incidents, including a comprehensive study on dog bite related fatalities published in 2013 by the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, that there is a co-occurrence of multiple, controllable factors of which breed is not included. Those factors are:
• No able-bodied person being present to intervene (87.1%)
• The victim having no familiar relationship with the dog(s) (85.2%)
• The dog(s’) owner failing to neuter/spay the dog(s) (84.4%)
• A victim’s compromised ability, whether based on age or physical condition, to manage their interactions with the dog(s) (77.4%)
• The owner keeping dog(s) as resident dog(s), rather than as family pet(s) (76.2%)
• The owner’s prior mismanagement of the dog(s) (37.5%)
• The owner’s abuse or neglect of dog(s) (21.1%)
Four or more of these factors were present in 80.5% of the cases. You can read more about this study at nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com, an excellent resource for information on this topic.
According to the Humane Society of the United States’ factsheet on breed-specific policies, experts have also found that no breed is more likely to bite than another. On the contrary, data suggests the small percentage of dogs that do bite and attack includes a range of breeds and mixes. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the National Animal Control Association, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention oppose breed-specific legislation (BSL) along with leading animal welfare organizations for very good reasons:
• BSL is bad for dogs because dogs with no problem behavior are removed from families who love them. Some owners—fearful of their dog being removed—take their dogs under ground, making it harder to reach them with services that would benefit them and improve community safety, such as sterilization, veterinary care and training. Animal shelters in jurisdictions with BSL remain flooded with legally unadoptable dogs, and most of them end up destroyed even when they’ve shown themselves to be nothing but sweet pets.
• BSL is bad for the community because targeting dogs by breed is not an effective solution to any public policy matter, including public safety issues or dog bite prevention. BSL actually moves communities further away from safety because it provides a false sense of security and wastes critical resources.
• BSL is bad for law enforcement and animal control because breed bans and restrictions force dogs out of homes and into shelters, taking up kennel space and resources that could be used for animals that are truly homeless. Underfunded animal control agencies bear the burden of enforcing the laws and are often called on to decide, based on looks alone, whether or not a dog belongs to a certain breed. Shelters in neighboring cities and counties usually end up taking in the dogs from places with bans. Even animal welfare programs which target by breed with the best of intentions have found it to be counterproductive.
Fortunately, Oklahoma’s dangerous dog law prohibits breed-specific laws from being enacted at the state or local level. In other words, all dogs are welcome in this state, and agencies are prohibited from enacting policies which discriminate on the basis of breed. It’s a well-designed and longstanding law that has withstood several legal and legislative challenges. This law also provides criminal penalties for dog owners who fail to appropriately manage their dogs. Other breed-neutral and effective steps that can be taken by local animal control agencies to improve public safety and animal welfare include enactment and enhanced enforcement of licensing laws, confinement laws, animal cruelty laws, greater access to spay/neuter programs, enactment of regulations prohibiting chaining and tethering as a continuous means of confinement, and public education programs that inform citizens about responsible petkeepin
