Barking Back : Mail Carriers March to Stress Danger of Dogs

Danny Fuentes, a resident of Glassell Park and a dog owner, was aghast Sunday morning when he looked out his front door and saw a crowd of marchers, chanting loudly and toting signs that bore a bar drawn through a picture of a growling dog.

“Are these people crazy? Why are they doing this?” he said, his voice rising. “Why do they want to get rid of dogs? Dogs have a life too!”

Only after a few moments did Fuentes realize that the marchers, organized by the U.S. Postal Service, were not chanting, “kill your dog,” but rather, “lock your dog up.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s all right. I support them.”

Getting dog owners to understand the danger that their pets pose to mail carriers has been a long, uphill battle for the U.S. Postal Service.

To help make the point, nearly 300 mail carriers, their friends and relatives, walked through Glassell Park on Sunday in a loud but friendly march designed to persuade dog owners to lock up their pets during mail delivery hours.

“People don’t realize how much their dogs interfere with mail service,” said marcher Pat Freeman, a mail supervisor who spent 10 years carrying the mail. “I’ve been chased all over the place.”

The “Dog Walk” has been held for five years in the Postal Service’s northeast Los Angeles delivery area, which has had one of the worst dog-bite records in the city.

Postal Service spokesman Larry Dozier said the northeast region, which stretches from Hollywood to Eagle Rock and is served by 633 carriers, accounted for nearly half of the 63 dog-bite cases recorded by the Postal Service in the city this year. Injuries were up 75%, from 16 to 28.

The safest area of the city is the Postal Service’s northwest region, covering the Westside, with five dog-bite injuries.

Nationwide, Dozier said, there are about 5,000 dog attacks against mail carriers each year.

The Los Angeles march is held each year in the worst sector of the northeast, which turned out to be Glassell Park this year with six dog-bites. It has been held in Highland Park, Eagle Rock, El Sereno and Echo Park in the past.

Besides chanting “lock your dog up,” postal workers in the mile-long walk carried signs saying: “Stop dog attacks,” or “Dog out, Noooo mail.”

Dozier said most dog owners often do not think that their cuddly pets are capable of attacking anyone.

Larry Brown, a postal worker for 24 years, was attacked once by a small dog with “razor-sharp teeth” that left him with a scar on his leg. He said he was in the hospital for a month after his wound became infected.

“Some people are real fortunate and never get bit,” one mail carrier said. “But we had one carrier who had to have a skin graft.”

Fabiola Benitez, 30, was one of dozens of residents who stood on their porches to watch the march. Her family German shepherd spent most of the time barking at the marchers from behind a fence.

“What they’re asking for is fair. We know they are afraid,” she said. “I get afraid too when I walk around here.”