Post Office Taking Dog Census to Curb Attacks

Attention, all San Diego County dogs: The U.S. Postal Service wants to know where you live.

Mail carriers countywide have been directed to identify all dogs on their routes as a way to cut down on a continuing problem of animal bites, San Diego Postmaster Margaret Sellers said this week.

Once the dog census is completed, each carrier will have a list pinpointing all dogs on a particular route, whether or not they have ever threatened postal employees.

“They will be told to use caution at those residences,” Sellers said, adding that most of the problems occur at single-family residences. “We want carriers to deliver mail if safe to do so, but we also want carriers to be alert anytime there is a dog at an address.

“If there’s a German shepherd in the yard baring its teeth, we ask the carrier to come back (to the office),” Sellers said. More than 100 carriers were bitten by dogs last year, Sellers said. While attacks from cats, bees and even birds have occurred, they are rare, she said.

The information will be used only by the Postal Service’s safety department, Sellers said, and will not be shared with other agencies, such as the county’s Department of Animal Control, which could compare Postal Service records to its own to determine whether people have registered their animals.

“That’s not our responsibility,” Sellers said. However, she emphasized that the Postal Service will continue to notify animal control officials each time a dog attacks a mail carrier.

“We’re aggressive about this because we have had some serious injuries to our people,” Sellers said. “Anytime we have an interference--let’s say that a carrier is chased down the street and even manages to get away--we still call animal control because there is a leash law.”

Sellers said that carriers carry a little can of cayenne pepper oil to spray as a defense.

“But most of our attacks come from animals hiding under bushes, from bites in the back of the leg before the carrier even sees the animal,” she said. “They usually don’t come from animals looking right at the carrier, and the (cayenne) solution, to burn and be effective, has to hit the animal right in the face.

“That’s going to be the advantage of our knowing that a dog is (at a residence) before delivering the mail.

“We want to respect the dog, but we want the dog to respect the carrier.”