Get a handle on dog bites

I remember going out collecting signatures against Bill 132 and instead having the government implant an extensive dog bite prevention program, keeping a dog bite registry to track re-offenders and why the bite took place of all dogs and making a law named after a young girl, Courtney Trempe who was killed by a Bull mastiff.

Did the Liberal government listen? I'm sure all the petitions were filed under TRASH and the Pit bull ban became law in Ontario to protect ALL the citizens in Ontario, as told by Michael Bryant.

So why are there still dog bites and attacks and how are we protected? It's obvious BSL wasn't the answer even after all our protests to Bryant and the Liberal party.

"For some reason, dog bites and attacks are not seriously tracked in this country, a shortcoming pointed out by a coroner's jury in Ontario in 1999." and here we are in 2007 and nothing has been done about it except to ban specific breeds.

It's time the government admits it's wrong and get these things implemented before more tragedies happen.

Get a handle on dog bites

Kelly Egan, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, July 04, 2007

A coroner's inquest should be called into the death of Korie Lyn Edwards, the pixie-faced child who never grew out of pigtails.

We just aren't getting it.

On Sunday, Korie Lyn, all of 17 months old, was mauled by her grandparents' dog at their home in Montague Township outside Smiths Falls.

Why? We may never know the answer, but we owe her the question.

For some reason, dog bites and attacks are not seriously tracked in this country, a shortcoming pointed out by a coroner's jury in Ontario in 1999.

We know snippets.

Statistics Canada reports dog-attack fatalities are quite rare: none in 2000 and 2001, three in 2002, two in 2003 and one in 2004.

An outfit called the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program, under the umbrella of the Public Health Agency of Canada, has done an interesting analysis of its data based on reports from 14 major Canadian hospitals. Except it is restricted to one year -- 1996. What since?

It looked at 1,237 records from those hospitals that reported dog bites. Children, as you might expect, are most vulnerable: 28.5 per cent of injuries were to victims aged five to nine, 22.1 per cent were aged two to four and 6.5 per cent were under the age of a year.

There was a breakdown according to the time of day, with almost 33 per cent of injuries inflicted between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. As for the worst days, 20.5 per cent occurred on Saturdays and 18.6 per cent on Sundays.

Even seasons had a fluctuation. Summer (37.7 per cent) and spring (26.8) led the way; winter trailed at 14 per cent.

The most likely place for a bite to occur is in the home, at 34.2 per cent, followed closely by someone else's home. The family dog inflicted the bite 30.2 per cent of the time, second to a dog belonging to a relative or neighbour (35.1). The report, however, is silent on the breed, age and size of the dog involved. We aren't sure how many people are bitten by dogs each year.

Even the Canada Safety Council has to do some guessing. It uses a figure from a Quebec coroner's inquest and, by extrapolation, estimates 460,000 people are bitten across the country annually.

Dr. Norma Guy is a veterinarian and animal behaviourist at the Atlantic Veterinary College, part of the University of Prince Edward Island. She was a witness at an inquiry into the 2002 death of James Waddell, 4, in New Brunswick, for which she produced recommendations to improve safety.

Little James wandered alone into the back yard of his home where three Rottweilers were loose during an unsupervised run. He was killed in a savage attack.

The owner described the dogs as "perfect pets" that had always behaved well around children. When he came into the yard, he found the largest dog, Thor, with blood all over his face.

"The dogs didn't realize anything was wrong. Thor wanted to play," he told the inquiry.

Dr. Guy, in a report to the inquest, said dogs "are scavengers with some residual predatory tendencies. They have both the physical characteristics and behaviour required to use aggression effectively."

She is not a great fan of mixing toddlers and dogs in the same household. Preschool children, in particular, have a tendency to touch or hug dogs. Infants and toddlers, meanwhile, act and move differently around dogs than adults, possibly contributing to an unpredictable reaction.

They are also strong enough to strike or play with an animal inappropriately and may misread the dog's warning signals.

"Any dog may bite, given a sufficient degree of arousal due to excitement, play, fear, pain, territoriality, possessiveness, sexual motivations, maternal motivations, or dominance," she wrote.

Dr. Guy had no first-hand knowledge of the weekend fatality, but yesterday reacted to a summary of the circumstances.

"If I had to pick a common scenario for this to happen, this would be it."

A toddler, wobbly on its feet, in a familiar environment such as a grandparent's home, the supervisory guard down a bit, adults present, but possibly not on the immediate scene, she recited.

"It's a common thing for little kids to approach a dog in such a way that the dog feels very threatened. Maybe the dog doesn't understand this little person is actually a person.

Toddlers don't behave the same way adults do."

Dogs will generally bite around the head area, she explained, because this is how dogs fight or play and because of the child's ready height.

"It's important to get across that this is extremely rare," especially given the millions of dogs across the country, she cautioned.

"Dogs are way less violent than people are. Way less."

A child in North America, in fact, is more likely to die at the hands of parents or caregivers than be killed by a dog.

All well and good. It remains that, as a country, we can do a much better job keeping track of dog attacks: the breed, the age and health of the animal, the circumstances, the victims, any contributing factors.

Little Korie Lyn is gone. It falls to us to ask why.

Contact Kelly Egan at 613-726-5896 or by e-mail, kegan@thecitizen.canwest.com