Dog Owners need to Increase Awareness to Stop Attacks | Dog Bite Attorney

On an almost daily basis, there seems to be a new story out about how someone was bitten by a dog and suffered fairly serious injuries. In the majority of these cases, the dog that attacked someone was a pitbull. This has caused much uproar in different circles around the nation for stricter legislation on certain types of dogs, specifically pitbulls. However, as was written on argusleader.com, the biggest change that needs to be made is by dog owners.

For Seattle residents, we live in a very dog friendly community. It is not uncommon to see people walking around downtown Seattle with their dog or even taking their "best friend" to work. Most dog owners are conscious of others around them and understand that putting their dog in situations where they may feel uncomfortable or threatened it not only compromising for the dog, but also others who, for whatever reason, the dog may attack. However, there are also many owners who fail to do so. By failing to recognize that your dog may in a situation that it may be uncomfortable in, dog owners are putting others in harms way.

Because of this, owners need to start becoming more aware of the situations that they are putting their dogs in, especially the dog is one that may have an aggressive nature, such as a pitbull.

Some other precautions that every dog owner should follow are:

•  Have your dog neutered. Unneutered male dogs are responsible for between 70 and 76 percent of all dog bites.
•  Let your dog off the leash several times a week. Dogs that are tethered or chained become increasing aggressive.
•  Have your dog trained properly. Poor training and/or socialization of dogs leads to increased aggression.

Each of those problems is a direct result from poor ownership decisions made by the owners. Even though the dog is the one that may have inflicted the injuries upon someone else, or worse a young child, it is the owner who is ultimately responsible for the actions of their pet. If we, as a society want to decrease dog bite injuries, we need to stop putting our dogs in situations where they are likely to become uncomfortable and therefore attack others.