Dog bite "epidemic"

HELP US SPREAD FACTS AND NOT FEAR BY SHARING.

Dog attacks induce fear, and fear leads to breed-specific legislation. It's natural for people to be shocked and scared when a bad attack happens, but it's important to keep things in perspective.

Dog bite related fatalities are thankfully fairly uncommon. Death by furniture, bags, balloons, slippers, front porch steps, bathtubs, lamp cords, buckets, cattle and horses- not to mention heart disease or cancer – are statistically more likely.

"Your chances of being killed by a dog or dogs are roughly one in 18 million. That means you are twice as likely to win a super lotto jackpot on a single ticket than to be killed by a dog. That means you are five times as likely to be killed by a bolt of lightening - not just struck by one, mind you - killed." (Bradley, 2005, p.20)

Despite having a higher populations in both dogs and people, drastic changes in the human and dog bond (from backyard solitary confinement to living in households) dog bite related fatalities have remained at a steady rate for decades. One would think that the rate of dog bite related fatalities would have increased at a significant rate as dogs became more integrated into our lives, but the data does not show this.

Nobody wants a dog bite related fatality to occur, these are horrific tragedies. But the data at hand tell us that dog bites are far from an epidemic.

In 2016, Statistics Canada data shows that there were 267,213 deaths. Cancer and heart disease are the leading causes of death in 2016, accounting for 48.6% of all deaths. In contrast,12,524 deaths were from accidents, 3,978 deaths were from suicide, 396 deaths were from homicide, 168 from complications of medical and surgical care, and 3 from dogs.

Sources and further reading:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/…/dai…/180628/dq180628b-eng.htm

https://www.amazon.ca/Dogs-Bite-Balloons-Slipp…/…/1888047186

https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0186.pdf

http://www.chicobandido.com/dbrf-canada/