By Gabrielle Beechert
https://www.dallasnews.com
For at least 86 years, The Dallas Morning News has printed a similar story.
In 1938, the paper reported a superintendent of a post office wanted mail service suspended at homes with vicious dogs. Two or three U.S. Postal Service letter carriers were bitten each week, he said. He cited an instance where a letter carrier had died from a dog bite-induced infection to support his argument.
In 1967, The News spoke to Don Antoniello, who held the “dubious distinction” of being the 84th letter carrier to be attacked or bitten in Dallas in the past year. From July 1974 to June 1975, the paper reported 61 mail carriers were bitten. In 1982, a dog bit letter carrier Kathy Delmar, and her story earned a spot on the first page of the Metro section.
In 1995, dogs bit postal workers Vangie Navarro and Don Doherty. In 1997, an unidentified Fort Worth letter carrier. The pages of The News in the 2000s and the 2010s recount similar anecdotes.
Data from 2023 shows that after all these years, parts of North Texas continue to face the same issue.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area was one of the most dangerous in the state for letter carriers when it came to dog attacks last year, according to the USPS. Dallas had the second-most dog attacks or bites on letter carriers in the state, and Fort Worth ranked fourth. The cities had 39 and 23 attacks or bites, respectively.
“That’s their main threat … ever since the existence of a letter carrier. It hasn’t changed,” said Kimetra Lewis, president of the Dallas branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers. “Now, and we have to be more aware of other things, but dog bites are just like No. 1.”
Don’t ‘bite the hand that serves you’
In early June, the Postal Service held its 2024 National Dog Bite Awareness Campaign. The Postal Service holds a similar campaign every year to educate dog owners and promote safe interactions between dogs and postal workers, said Lecia Hall, a USPS strategic communications specialist in Plano.
“Dog owners can help protect the carriers,” Hall said. “Our [campaign] for this year was, ‘Don’t let your dog bite the hand that serves you,’ you know, and the letter carriers are the people that are out there serving the customers.”
In 2023, there were more than 5,800 dog attacks on postal workers nationwide,which was an increase from the prior year. Of these, 411 occurred in Texas. Four cities in Texas are on the Postal Service’s list of the 20 cities with the most dog attacks on letter carriers. According to a letter to the editor written by Dallas Postmaster Daniel Reyes III, dogs bit an average of 15 letter carriers every day.
The Postal Service began campaigning about dog bite awareness in the mid-1980s, according to a News article written June 19, 1995. About the time the campaigning started, the service counted 7,000 bites or attacks each year, the article said.
Both pet dogs and stray dogs can pose a threat, but Lewis said stray dogs are more likely to attack letter carriers.
Stray dogs are more common in certain parts of the city, such as the southern side of Dallas, Lewis said. Letter carriers are advised to call animal control through the city’s 311 number to report stray or loose dogs. Lewis said animal control needs to spend more time in the streets looking for stray dogs.
Marlo Clingman, the Dallas animal services marketing coordinator, said the city has 41 animal services officer positions, though five are currently vacant.
The organization uses data from phone calls, online forms and an app to set up patrols based on the volume of reports in certain areas, she said. Animal services will then round up these dogs all at once.
In the month of May, animal services had about 7,000 calls, and it picked up 1,487 loose dogs, she said.
While Clingman did not comment on whether she thinks an increased animal service presence would lessen the number of stray dogs, she did say that people should call animal services through the city’s 311 number if they see a loose dog. The city also has a survey about loose dogs that’s running through the end of July, she said.
While Lewis said these stray dogs pose a bigger threat to letter carriers, pet dogs can still be problematic, she said.
“I do think that the owners of the dogs are being real lax and not making sure that they’re properly contained,” Lewis said. “I’m a dog owner, so I don’t believe in a dog being on [a rope] or something tied into the backyard, but I do think that the customers need to be made more aware of making sure the dogs are contained.”
How to prevent bites, and what to do once they happen
As part of its yearly campaign, the Postal Service highlights measures dog owners and postal workers can take to prevent dog bites. Owners should keep their dogs behind a fence, away from the door or in another room or on a leash, the Postal Service said in its news release. Pet owners should remind children to not take mail directly from the letter carrier because the dog may view the letter carrier as a threat to the child.
If a dog does attack, letter carriers are trained to stand their ground and protect their bodies by placing something, such as their mail satchel, between their bodies and the dogs. If necessary, letter carriers will use dog repellent.
However, if a letter carrier feels their safety is at risk, they can bar delivery service to sections of a neighborhood until the dog is deemed safe. In these instances, mail will have to be picked up at the local post office.
When a dog bites a letter carrier, the Postal Service is obligated to pay injured workers for the 45 days following an injury if they opt for continuation of pay, Lewis said.
They can also file for federal workers’ compensation after suffering an injury on the job, according to Brad Parker, a Bedford attorney who has been working in personal injury law for almost 40 years. They can also sue a third party — the dog owner — for the injury.
“One of the things that we really focus on on these cases is the fear, the sheer terror of being attacked by a dog,” Parker said.
According to the most recent information available from the Insurance Information Institute, the average cost per insurance claim for a dog bite is $64,555. When a postal employee suffers an injury, the owner could be responsible for medical bills, lost wages, uniform replacement costs, and pain and suffering for the employee, the Postal Service said.
“I am grateful that [the Postal Service does] take out the time to, you know, to talk to the letter carriers, to have safety talks, to advise them on ways to avoid being attacked and what they need to do in the event that they have they do get attacked by a dog,” Lewis said.
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
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