It's a dog-eat-dog world—and public safety people want to keep it that way. They've published a guideline in hopes of drastically reducing the number of dog bites of humans.
"A Community Approach to Dog Bite Prevention" was published June 1 by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Task Force on Canine Aggression and Human-Canine Interactions (J Am Vet Med Assoc. 2001;218:1732-1750).
A core recommendation of the document advocates moving away from creating local controlling ordinances targeted at specific dog breeds. Such an approach is a typical response by a community following an attack on a person, but such legislation usually only riles owners of those breeds while failing to reduce the number of dog bites, the task force argued.