Thursday, June 05, 2025

Dog bite month, not just a week

Dog Bite week used to be in April, but now it gets a whole month. June. The 2025 National Dog Bite Awareness Campaign by the United States Postal Service (USPS) takes place throughout the month of June 2025. The theme for the 2025 campaign is "Secure Your Dog, Keep Deliveries on Track". When I was the Vet Med librarian at Ohio State I kept a huge file on this topic--injuries and hospitalizations and deaths. My motto: All Dogs Will Bite. And it's primarily a male problem. Male dogs owned by young men biting young boys.

"About 4.5 million persons sustain animal bites in the US per year, about 750,000 of which require medical attention. Bites are a combination of laceration, crush, avulsion, and puncture injuries and can cause abscess, cellulitis, and lymphangitis. Most dog bite injuries are soft tissue injuries, fractures, sprains, strains, or crush; less than 1% are skull fractures and damage to intrathoracic, abdominal, pelvic, or intracranial cavities. Dog bites account for 60% to 90%, and cat bites 5% to 20% of bites receiving care. Results from a retrospective study of dog and cat bites in California found dog bites highest in boys younger than 10 and cats highest in women older than 80, mainly occurring in residences and during the summer." StatPearls, Animal bites, 2025 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430852/

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