More about educating people about dogs

[Guest guest]

In response to my posting of yesterday about the lessons to

be learned from the fatal pet dog incident in Meenambakkam, one

correspondent wrote off-line that the dog was a pug, not a German

shepherd.

 

The Hindu reported on Wednesday that the dog was a Labrador.

 

None of this makes a difference as regards the rules for

safely handling a pet in a public place, including portions of an

apartment house frequented by people other than the pet keeper.

 

The #1 reason for keeping a dog leashed in public is to

protect the dog. While it is necessary to prevent the dog from

harming or frightening other people, it is far more often necessary

to keep a dog from running into traffic, conflicting with another

dog or a cat or a monkey, or eating something that might make the

dog sick.

 

All of this applies just as much to a pug as to a pit bull

terrier. The pit bull terrier poses an astronomically greater risk

to other people and animals, but as important as this factor is,

traffic accidents and accidental ingestion of toxic materials are

among the leading causes of canine mortality.

 

The correspondent continued to describe the Meenambakkan

incident thusly:

 

 

>The kids were playing on the terrace with the pug, and it

>appears it got very excited and the boy being unaccustomed to dogs got

>nervous, moved away and TRIPPED. The parapet on the terrace is

>apparently shockingly low

 

 

Just yesterday the U.S. Centers for Disease Control &

Prevention published findings that pets are involved in about 86,000

human falls in the U.S. per year, usually by older people, that

result in serious injury to the victim.

 

This is approximately 20% of the number of dog bite incidents

in the U.S. that require hospital treatment.

 

From previous data compilations, it is known that India and

the U.S. have approximately the same rates of dog bite requiring

hospital treatment -- about one bite per 66 people per year.

 

This can be misleading in some respects, because in India

the usual hospital treatment required is post-rabies exposure

vaccination. Because rabies is endemic in India, and the dog

vaccination rate is low, post-rabies exposure vaccination is

essential after almost any bite. Because canine rabies is extinct in

the U.S., U.S. bites that require hospital treatment tend to be much

more severe.

 

India, conversely, has markedly fewer fatalities from

injuries inflicted by dogs, as opposed to diseases inflicted by dogs.

 

Nonetheless, if one extrapolates that the ratio of serious

falls to bites is probably about the same in India as in the U.S.,

India probably has about 320,000 people injured each year in falls

caused by dogs and cats, mostly dogs, because dogs are much more

abundant in most of India than cats.

 

The prospect that a loose dog may cause someone to fall is

accordingly serious and significant, and should be of concern to

anyone keeping a dog, along with the risk that the dog may bite

someone.

 

Again, the risk from an owned pet is far greater than the

risk from a street dog, not least because street dogs learn as

puppies to avoid being tripped over and stepped on, if they survive

puppyhood. These are relatively small risks for pet puppies, who

learn that people pet them, carry them around, feed them, and

cuddle them, and accordingly grow up to be often underfoot, while a

former street dog, even years after adoption, will remain wary of

any possibility of ending up underneath a human, or a horse, or any

larger creature.

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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