AUSTIN -- Last year Cooper Brothers was at home crawling on the floor when his world came to a sudden stop. Reggie, the family dog of eight years bit the infant on the face.
Cooper’s mother, Shelley, was in the room at the time. “It was literally a split second when I heard a cry,” she said.
Emergency crews rushed Cooper to Dell Children’s Medical Center where he underwent a surgery to save his nose.
The family’s skittish keeshond mix had never bitten before.
The incident underscored a startling statistic at Dell Children's. Last year the emergency room saw a 50 percent rise in dog bites from the year before; doctors treated 292 children in all.
Dr. Adam Weinfeld, a plastic surgeon specializing in the face, said the bites are becoming more common as Austin continues to grow.
“The structures that seem to be bitten most often are the nose and the lips,” he said.
Emergency rooms elsewhere are reporting the same. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 306,000 non-fatal dog bites in 2006 nationwide. In 2010, there were 342,000.
Jay Wilton, a dog behaviorist at the Triple Crown Academy in Hutto, said that owners are not taking the proper time to train their pets.
“You need both [owner and dog] to come together and have that relationship and get that understanding,” he said.
Yet there may be other reasons too. Dog ownership is at its highest level ever, with more than 78 million U.S. families now owning dogs.
Breed may be another factor. Still, Dr. Weinfeld points out that all dogs are unpredictable.
“I’ve seen injuries from the whole spectrum,” he said. “From Yorkshire Terriers, up to the classic ‘pit bull’ injury.”
As for the Brothers family, they just want people to hear their story and not leave children under 10 alone with any dog.
“Nobody ever expects it will happen, but the most common dog bites occur within your family dog or a neighbor’s dog,” Shelley Brothers said.
After their attack, the Brothers turned Reggie over to the Humane Society. They say they still love dogs, but that they now approach them differently.
Click here to see a record of dog attacks since 1982 organized by breed.
