Prevention of Dog Bites in Children
A small trial was undertaken in Sydney to find out how best to educate children to prevent being bitten by a dog.
While we're talking about children, flat-footed or otherwise, a trial of dog bite prevention has found that teaching children how to approach dogs, or not as the case may be, can change their behaviour in a much safer direction.
Associate Professor Simon Chapman was one of the research team. He's in the University of Sydney's Department of Public Health.
Simon Chapman: We estimate there are about 13,000 dog bites in Australia each year which require medical attention in hospital, and of those around about 1400 actually require reconstructive surgery of some sort, and about 60% of those occur in children under ten years of age.
Norman Swan: And do we know the pattern of dog bites, apart from that?
Simon Chapman: The dog which is most likely to bite somebody, is a well-known dog, it's not a case of stranger-danger type dogs. It's the family dog, the neighbourhood dog, a dog which is well-known, and that of course presents considerable educational challenges.
Norman Swan: So before you planned this study, what did you know about what causes a dog to bite?
Simon Chapman: Well guidelines on prevention in the past have been pretty much unevaluated; we really have very little knowledge about how to prevent dog bites. They've been mostly on things like controls and high risk breeds, or keeping dogs muzzled or on leashes, animal training and educating dog owners. But curiously enough, no-one had really looked before at the possibilities of educating particularly young children about avoiding dog attacks.
Norman Swan: And how do you know what is effective in avoiding dog attacks?
Simon Chapman: Well we used a randomised control trial study design, randomised eight randomly-selected Sydney schools, some 340 children. Basically the children who received the intervention, which was a one-off lesson, were dramatically less likely to engage in behaviour that's likely to attract a dog to attack than the children who hadn't received the intervention.
Norman Swan: So that was my question: we know fairly reliably what behaviour makes a dog attack?
Simon Chapman: People who work with animals report consistently that things like sudden movements, disturbing a dog when it's asleep, or when it's eating, dogs in cars are apparently a bit of a hot spot, they don't like being cooped up in cars. And running and agitating and trying to startle an animal, those sort of behaviours are the things which were the substance of the lesson.
Norman Swan: So they got the lesson and those sorts of avoidance behaviours?
Simon Chapman: They did. These were children who were 7 and 8 years of age, so basically the lesson consisted of getting them to talk about what a friendly dog looks like, what a strange dog looks like, how to behave around them, had they ever been chased or approached by a hostile dog, and then going through a series of practice behaviours with a dog, where they were told how to approach the dog, basically by asking permission of the owner, extending the back of the hand, not going for the top of the head, just being very, very cautious around the dog. And in our study we used a hidden camera in a playground when the children were let out of the school, unbeknown to them they were being filmed, and some 80% of the children who hadn't had the lesson went straight up to the dog and tried to excite it and pat it furiously, pull its hair, that sort of thing. Whereas only 9% of the children who had had the intervention did that.
Norman Swan: And we don't know yet whether that actually reduces dog bites?
Simon Chapman: We don't. Our observational period was 7-10 days after the lesson, and my wife as a primary school teacher, tells me that if you can get children to retain something for 7-10 days, it's pretty good. But obviously we would need to see whether this effect lasts, whether you'd need booster lessons, and of course the big question: whether it would work in naturalistic situations, for example round the family dog, round the neighbourhood dog, that sort of thing. I tend to think that if children are very, very familiar with a dog, and they weren't with this dog, then the results that we obtained are probably going to be a little bit optimistic.
Norman Swan: Because their guard was down.
Simon Chapman: They're very familiar with the dog; they don't probably equate a strange dog with a familiar dog, and of course familiar dogs, as I pointed out, are the ones which are most likely to inflict an attack.
Norman Swan: Just like murder really, you get bitten by the person you know.
Simon Chapman: Well it certainly is. It's like gun deaths, it's like stabbings, it's like all that sort of stuff.
Norman Swan: Simon Chapman, who's Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Sydney. I'm Norman Swan and you've been listening to The Health Report.
References: Chapman S. et al. Preventing dog bites in children: randomised controlled trial of an educational intervention. British Medical Journal, Vol. 320, 3 June 2000: pp 1512-1513.
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- Associate Professor Simon Chapman
- Department of Public Health and Community Medicine,
University of Sydney,
Sydney NSW 2000
- Dr Norman Swan
- Brigitte Seega