New South Wales Dog Attacks

Last year, between the months of October and December, 470 people were bitten by dogs, 126 of them being classified as "serious" enough to require medical treatment.

The news article chose to translate the statistic into 8 dog attacks a day by including attacks on other animals. In reality, about five humans were bitten a day during that time period.

New South Wales puts out quarterly bite reports here. Here's the breakdown of attacks based on severity and age of victim for the entire year of 2009.

Adults	Child > 16	No Injury	Minor	Med Treat	Hospital	Death
291	75	196	85	61	23	1
355	86	213	120	84	24	0
375	108	218	123	126	16	0
355	115	222	122	106	20	0
1376	384	849	450	377	83	1

There were 1,760 attacks, most of the victims were over the age of 16. Nearly 50% of them resulted in No Injury to the victim. 25% resulted in Minor Injury. That means in 2009, 75% of dog bites were minor injuries or not injurious at all. About 4.7% of the victims required hospitalization and 21% required medical treatment. Less then 33% of dog bite victims required medical treatment or hospitalization. One person, or 0.05% of victims, died from the bite wounds.

You can look at the breed data yourself. I'm not including them because they don't delineate between attacks on people and attacks on nonhumans. I think there is a big difference between an attack between two dogs and an attack on an adult human. Further, I don't think they're useful. Most dog attacks are committed by dogs of an "unknown" breed or by "mixed breeds". The severity per breed is not included nor are the circumstances - all would be useful in even considering making judgments based on the phenotype of a dog (I say phenotype, or the physical appearance, because that is what eyewitness accounts go off of - they don't have pedigrees or genotypes available to them, so it's an iffy assessment at best).

Including attacks on other animals, 72% of attacks were committed by one dog and 25% were committed by two dogs. There were 23 other attacks involving 3 or more dogs. Most dog bites were committed by solo dogs, not by packs.

New South Wales has a population of 6.9 million. In 2009, 0.0255% of them were bitten by dogs. And again, 75% of that 0.0255% of the population required no medical treatment or hospitalization - that is, they were either uninjured or incurred a minor injury.

Most dogs don't bite. When they do, they tend to show incredible restraint. Most dog bites are not severe in nature. This, to me, is always an amazing feat.