Edit: It isn’t rabies that makes them unsafe - just in the USA about 4.5 million Americans are attacked by dogs every year resulting in thousands of hospitalizations.
https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(09)70079-1/ful...
> [...] Dogs kill 25 thousand people a year
I don't see it in the paper and it's a HUGE discrepancy. Do you mean globally? Again where did you even get that number? The ONLY reference I see is this from a CDC paper [1]:
> From 1979 to 1994, dog attacks resulted in 279 deaths to humans in the United States, resulting in an average of 17 to 18 deaths per year.
Sooo... Less than 20 deaths per year, up-to 21 in the worst case estimate, in a country (USA) where ~34 million households have dogs. I'm seriously perplexed, dawg. Did you read the paper or just link to it assuming no one will even skim it?
The paper was part of my edit just looking at the 4.5 million attacks in the USA alone (where rabies is essentially gone) to point out that it isn’t just rabies that makes them unsafe. Here you can read about the 25k deaths:
The deaths are from impoverished countries like India where rabid dogs run rampant and people are too poor to get treatments.
The 4.5 million bites (not individuals bit) is a discredited number based on some projections from ER visits and other reports where no standard protocol for reporting exists. It’s similar to the drunk driving related statistics, where if you are a drunk cab passenger and the car get into an accident it is considered “alcohol related”.
Here are three sources: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-36320744
https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-deadliest-animals-201...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_h...
> The 4.5 million bites (not individuals bit) is a discredited number
Care to provide a source? I provided mine but all you came in with is conjecture. In fact here is the stat again straight from the American Vetrinary Medicine Association.
https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/pet-owners/dog-bite-pre...
Huh? The cited article gives US statistics. "During this 27-year time period there were 504 deaths reported. An average of 18.67 deaths occurred per year, with a range of 11 to 33 deaths." That's about the same as US deaths from lightning strikes.[1]
[0] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-animals-that-kill-mo...
But calling dogs killers because one is allergic to them is a bit disingenuous no? People are allergic to many things. It’s not the thing that’s the problem, rather the individual body’s overreaction in the presence of the thing. The problem is with the body, not the allergen, wouldn’t you agree?
On multiple occasions I had a group of dogs chasing me on a mountain road while I was on my bike with trucks on one side and a cliff on another.
Don't fault me, I had every right to be there in peace, and enjoy my bike ride. No wild animal bothered me, just the goddamn dogs.
I don't want dogs anywhere near me.
And yes, statistically they are far more dangerous than bears, mountain lions, and wolves combined, in terms of both injuries and deaths, even if you exclude rabies cases.
Dogs were bred to fearlessly attack anything unknown and that's exactly what they do.
Wild animals, on the other hand, generally fear the unknown and stay away from it.
> Dogs were bred to fearlessly attack anything unknown and that's exactly what they do.
This is completely untrue and the complete opposite of how dogs evolved. Dogs were domesticated to live among humans in harmony. If you experience a poorly behaved dog, it’s the owner at fault. Some owners mistreat their dogs and/or raise them with poor social habits, causing the dog to behave aggressively towards humans. It’s learned distrust, for which you have people to blame. Good owners will treat their dogs well. Such dogs will not attack another person unless their owner is being physically harmed. I don’t know if you’re living in America, most dogs in North American society come from well-adjusted homes where people treat them as members of the family.
You can learn how to make friends with any dog. It can be taught. The fear you experience is learnt and can be unlearnt.
No, fuck that. Being chased on a mountain road is life-threatening and it's the dog's fault, not mine. Literally no other animal does this, they are nuisances.
> If a dog has its ears and tail up, it’s looking to play with you, not tear you to pieces. Dogs have clear signals and behaviours that need to be understood.
No, fuck that. In MY language:
mellow purring = friendly
barking = threat
If I move away or yell at an animal, that means NO and do NOT follow me. Almost all other animals including cats usually understand CONSENT and what "NO" means very well.
> If you experience a poorly behaved dog, it’s the owner at fault.
Well, 90% of dogs I've encountered don't have owners and many of them threatened me. Often in packs. The few dogs I've met that have owners, at least half of them were very badly behaved.
100% of bears and coyotes I've encountered don't have owners either, and to this date every single one I encountered has left me alone.
> You can learn how to make friends with any dog.
I really just do not want to. Like most cats and porcupines, I really just want to be left alone by dogs. That's my choice, and I want to be respected and dogs to respect that I do not wish to be approached, sniffed, barked at, or chased.
I'm more than happy making friends with other animals, and do not need dogs in my life at all.
Are you seriously…expecting “packs of wild dogs without owners” to understand “consent” and “no”? I mean I get in your experience your not going to be trustworthy of the animals, but if you are encountering wild dogs, they by definition are not domesticated and likely not to be all that familiar with commands and human behaviors. They know 3 things…eat, procreate, and protect the pack. If you are barking at wild dogs and asserting your dominance in their territory, you are a threat…and it’s no wonder they would act aggressively.
Yes. Almost EVERY other animal understands that if you stomp, roar, hiss, and yell at them that you don't consent to be approached. This is common instinctive language across all animals. Most wild animals will just leave you (and anything unknown) alone in the first place. Even the most fierce predators don't go around attacking random shit for the hell of it unless they are actually hungry.
Dogs aren't a natural species, they were bred by humans and bred to be something that evolution would have never naturally created.
That is incorrect. Some predators do. You do, and you are not random. You are a threat on their territory and by your own admission, an aggressive threat with no respect for them as a pack or their territory.
I regret to hear of your phobia, but both of our experiences are just anecdotes with no weight to argue from.
Also, there are plenty of people I know with the same experiences as me.
Maybe dogs hate the way I smell and love the way you smell but that doesn't make it right.
I do carry defenses (rocks, pepper spray) to deal with the situation and avoid injury but having to be on guard for dogs at every second and ready to pull out these things on a moment's notice is NOT a pleasant way to cope.
I respect your wish not to feel threatened and I tried to show that, no need to make incorrect replies.
That doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen to you or wasn’t meaningful, just a poor persuasive argument.
I have to say it is less of a problem while hiking. Coyotes do leave me alone. It's much more of a problem if walking, running, or bicycling through suburban areas. Yeah, I know, Americans (especially those living in massively gentrified areas) tend to just tell me I shouldn't do these activities and get in an SUV instead, but that's not how most of the world wants to live.
> in the US
Yeah, the US isn't the world. This might be why you haven't seen how dogs can be a huge problem. The US isn't representative of the stray dog problem that plagues very large parts of the world, including eastern Europe, east and southeast Asia, Middle East, central America, and sub-saharan Africa.
Cut the shit, you don’t know anything about the US based on your own comments. I talked about hiking because animal encounters are even less of a problem when walking in neighborhoods/cities. Nobody said anything about riding in an SUV.
It sounds like your problem isn’t with domesticated dogs then and is with feral ones instead. You do know this entire conversation and article is not about wild dogs right?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to...