What is a dog bite?
While the question seems simple enough, the answer is often not what we imagine.
Dog bite numbers offer little useful information about canine behavior. Dog bite numbers are simply a tally of the number of people who sought medical treatment and/or reported a break in skin after exposure to a dog’s nail or tooth, – or in other words, the number of people injured interacting with a dog, whether or not the interaction involved aggression.
So if dog bite numbers offer little useful information about canine aggression, then what can Michigan dog bite numbers really tell us about canine / human interaction?
Dog bite numbers reveal that there is no “dog bite epidemic” in Michigan. All evidence indicates that dog-related injuries in the state have steadily decreased over the past 3 decades.
Increased awareness of the importance of humane care and control of dogs, the enactment and enforcement of leash laws, and dog bite prevention education, have all been instrumental in drastically lowering the number of reported dog-related injuries nationwide.
Despite significant increases in the human and dog population, dog bite numbers show a steady and significant decrease in dog-related injuries in areas of Michigan with dog bite data from the 1970s:
Source: City of Detroit, Animal Control and Care Division
National Canine Research Council