Reply #25: Myth? Myth?...

[Bigmack]

A survey by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta ("CDC") concluded that dogs bite nearly 2% of the U.S. population -- more than 4.7 million people annually.

Almost 800,000 bites per year -- one out of every 6 -- are serious enough to require medical attention. (Weiss HB, Friedman D, Coben JH. Incidence of dog bite injuries treated in emergency departments.

Dog bites send nearly 368,000 victims to hospital emergency departments per year (1,008 per day).

The number of fatal dog attacks in the USA has been going up. The yearly average was 17 in the 1980s and 1990s; as stated above, there were 33 deaths in 2007, 23 in 2008, and 30 in 2009.

Dog attack victims in the US suffer over $1 billion in monetary losses every year.

http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html

Research shows half of all children are bitten by dogs at some point, and half of those attacks occur at home with a familiar dog.

Children under 15 years of age represent 70 percent of dog bite victims.

Coyotes....

Coyote attacks on people are extremely rare. There have been a small number of attacks on people in the U.S. and Canada, with most of the attacks involving small children under 5 years of age. Since 3 million children are bitten by dogs every year, your small child is millions of times more likely to get hurt by the family pet than by a coyote.

Two deaths by coyote since around 1980... one small child in California in 1980, and a woman killed in eastern Canada last year... probably by wolf/coyote crosses.

Those are not myths.