Not all bites are created equal

I've been bitten by a dog. My own dog. Bad enough to require "medical attention." And cause permanent "disfigurement."Sounds pretty bad, right? It really wasn't. Depending on the jurisdiction, however, that could be enough to earn my dog a "vicious dog" label, could force us to move, or could result in my dog losing his life.

But my dog is not vicious by any stretch of the word. Absent extreme circumstances, he would not intentionally bite anyone. He lets children take things from his mouth and sit on him after doing it. When my sister accidentally shut his tail in the car door, he just sat and whined until we extricated his poor tail from its painful prison. My dog did not intentionally bite me. Not for one second did I consider my life to be in danger. In fact, in the brief moment while he was biting down, I was thinking, "Please hurry up and figure out you're biting me so you'll let go, buddy!" But that never matters when dog bites find their way into the media. It also may very well not matter in the eyes of the law.

And that scares me.


Time and time again, I read headlines that go something like this: "Stray dog attacks family pet, then attacks human." The reality is, most of these people are bitten trying to break up the dog fight. Am I saying it is appropriate for dogs to be running around lose, biting leashed dogs? Absolutely not.

What I am saying as that these bites are qualitatively different. They are not indicative at all of a dog's inclination to bite a human. They say nothing about a dog's demeanor around humans. Indeed, often a bitten human cannot conclusively say if his own dog or the stray was the one that actually bit him. Yet the media glosses over that uncomfortable notion. And often times so do animal control agencies.

Media makes no attempt to differentiate between seriousness or intent of dog bites. The general conclusion a casual newsreader/viewer will come to after retaining stories on dog bites is that all bites are terrible and life threatening. There is a second general assumption that all bites that require medical treatment are terrible and life threatening and intentional.

I keep an eye on media reports on dog bites for many reasons. I've noticed that the media may very well report on just about any sort of bite. From a fatality to a nip on the chin. And their headlines certainly aren't going to give you any clues as to the seriousness of the incident. My own dog bite experience could have been a news story. But I hardly consider "Dog Owner Makes Management Error, Receives Well-Deserved Bite" to be a headline of any interest or relevance to my community members.

Humans are delicate. For our size, we are relatively weak and pathetic. We bruise easily. We tear easily. Consequently, even an accidental cuff can cause injury to a human. Look at how dogs play; they chew each other's faces, they constantly use their teeth, they throw each other to the ground. We need to respect that their instinctive behaviors are very different from those of humans.

We really need to give dogs a break. I've been rescuing almost a decade, and I've never received anything but the most minimal of cuffs from a rescue dog (and none from a pit bull type dog). Many of these dogs are dogs that have perfectly good reasons to mistrust humans and, consequently, to defend themselves against humans. But they don't. Yes, there are cases where a dog intentionally inflicts multiple, life-threatening wounds on a human. But those cases are so rare that they are almost negligible. And those incidents almost always reek of human mismanagement and malevolence. Dogs are (wo)man's best friend. Yes, even dogs that "bite."