Over the past few years, the Park City and Summit County governments have been trying to figure out what to do about off-leash dogs. People see many dogs off-leash\u00a0on our trails\u00a0and then hear about dog bites around town and reason that off leash dogs are \u00a0the cause of the problem.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0reached out to Summit County Animal Control to understand how many dog bites there were in 2014. They promptly responded that Summit County had 129 dog bites last year. I was\u00a0taken aback because I\u00a0would never have guessed that there were that many bites in our county. Yet sometimes numbers are misleading. \u00a0I decided to research dog bites nationwide. According to a CDC study,\u00a0there are approximately 4.5 million dog bites per year. That means about 1.5% percent of the US population is bitten each year.<\/a><\/p>\n Yet in Summit County that number is about 0.4% of the population.\u00a0So, we are at about 1\/3 of the national average<\/strong>\u00a0. If this were burglaries or murder we would be celebrating our achievements. Yet with dogs, the narrative of Summit County being\u00a0overrun by wild dogs seems to have\u00a0overtaken the truth.<\/p>\n I\u00a0don’t mean to make light of dog bites. I\u00a0know even one dog bite is too many.<\/strong> The fear that victims have experienced must\u00a0be extreme and I hope it never happens to me. That said, we are doing far better than average.<\/p>\n Yet, we as a community have seemed to correlate increased off-leash dogs with dog bites. If anything, if there are more off-leash dogs around\u00a0Park City\u00a0than average, then the correlation seems to demonstrate that more off-leash dogs leads to less dog bites.<\/strong><\/p>\n So, I’m not sure there is actually an issue, relative to the populace as a whole. After getting the numbers, I am actually convinced that we are doing better than most. If our off-leash dog population decreased to the national average, would it decrease dog bites or would we revert to the mean (3 times as many dog bites)?<\/p>\n